The idea of dancing to bad house music is something I could never get behind.

When I was younger, bands helped me connect to part of my humanity; bands that had nothing to do with anything political helped to form me. There's a correlation in that: If people can connect to music, maybe they can connect to each other.

The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Radiohead to Bjork.

Songwriting is reliant on inspiration, which ideally you don't have that much control over. Songs kind of half make themselves, and then you have to finish them.

Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.

I always find live shows on film kind of boring. Even my favorite ones, I kinda zone out for most of it. It's just so different seeing a band in the flesh and then watching a film of it, even if you have a hundred cameras and it's shot from every angle. There's just a communal, visceral thing that never translates very well.

My favorite English teacher in high school showed me 'Brazil' when I was 15 and it blew my mind. It's one of those movies that's revealed itself in different ways as I've gone back to it over the years.