Everything is this distorted mishmash of pop culture that pulls from this era and that era and is just thrown at the wall. These people have no clue what anything really means. There are guys out there getting a million hits for a video.

I would much rather not be the center of attention, and I'd much rather travel and be writing my novel, rather than standing on a stage and trying to get people to understand something.

That's not to say I came from the streets or anything - most of the time I was on my grandmother's back porch. I was kept in a constant state of amniotic fluid.

One of my struggles is that I'm a glutton. There's always those very simple, long, old-ass things, but they're very real to me, and I'm sitting in them, and they're swirling in my mind all the time. I tell people about it and they think, "Why don't you just go and make some money, go get a big-screen TV, or look at the Internet." Or they say, "Go create some introspective art." I just want to explode. I don't know how everybody else is able to walk around so calm. It's amazing to me when I see people walking so calmly down the street. I envy them, but I also kind of hate them.

Everything is this distorted mishmash of pop culture that pulls from this era and that era and is just thrown at the wall. These people have no clue what anything really means. There are guys out there getting a million hits for a video.

People tend to believe that I want to make soul music, which is not entirely untrue but, really, I want to be like the black Tom Waits - I don't want to make one kind of sound.

Everything that I do is limitation and complete intuition. I'm a human being. I'm not a musician. I'm not an entertainer. I don't know anything!