When it comes to sitting down and composing, there is no hesitation, no concern, no critics breathing fire down my neck. For me, writing a song is the purest part of all. No one can mess with that.

Musically I'm able to keep going, because it's not about money and it's not about success. It's a challenge.

When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations.

New York is not the centre for American culture and art that it once was because of the forces of conservatism. Giuliani, capitalism - and then there was 9/11. I really believe that if I leave, it will suffer! Maybe that's why I love it here, because I feel wanted.

Opera needs to be a total escape from real life. To relate to what we're going through today is fine and dandy, but it's really about being transported and completely swept away by a romantic notion.

Why be in music, why write songs, if you can't use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life?

I like to think of myself as a combination of Sid Vicious and Virgil Thompson