Sometimes a loss that just comes out of left field rings in a very weird way when you have actually sort of relied on this small moment with this or that person, as a moment that actually has defined something for you in your life.

The early 2000s for me were a very emotional time, politically. I'd been through Reagan and been through first Bush and Clinton, and it's not like I had an easy time through those years. But I just thought it was particularly rough. I have to say the World Trade Center attack was very weird for me. The events that followed were worse. It was a really long swath of time.

Bands-- enough with the crayon face-paint-- you're better than that.

Though I know for a fact that some of my fans would be happy for me to do anything that's going to help me be successful, namely to go to a major label, and I thank them for that, there'd be a lot of people who I think wouldn't be so happy with that change, and when I DO get dropped, then where would I be?

As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down.

I'm even old-school Instagram. I'm here for your "What did you have to eat today?" I'm fine with that.

The obsessive documentation is itself adjacent to hyper-consumption in our society. The desire to just have everything all the time and adjacent to that is - it might be a little hokey but - a certain loss of identity that then only gets sort of found or ascribed to these moments that are documented.