Asking for help with shame says: You have the power over me. Asking with condescension says: I have the power over you. But asking for help with gratitude says: We have the power to help each other.
I draw the line at letting people into my songwriting cave. To me, that's where the alchemy happens and where the mystery is.
Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point.
There's a huge cloud of shame around art and business being seen as bedfellows.
I hate being ignored.
The world needs actual excitement and emotion more than it needs cool people.
I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.
I'm a massive fan of David Lynch and 'Twin Peaks.'
If you stuck me in a room and gave me art-making tools but told me no one would ever see the results, I don't think I'd have much desire to make art. What I do comes from a deep desire to be seen and to see others.
I have never in my career embarked on a journey towards controversy. I have never deliberately set a flame.
I think one of the greatest gifts you can give to someone is just access to the possibility of freedom that you don't have to be totally depressed and enslaved by your own environment.
Every album is just a greatest hits of whatever songs are on a pile when I go in to make a record.
Meditation, especially for people who don't know very much about it and think it's this very hippy dippy thing, can really be powerful, terrifying even, as it lifts the rug up on your subconscious and the dust comes flying out.
If you're willing to take risks, Twitter is a vast amusement park of interesting life possibilities.
One of the best things about Kickstarter and crowdfunding and the collapse of the music business is a lot of artists like me have been forced to face our own weird mess about ourselves and what we thought it meant to become musicians.
I've been in a recording studio enough times to know that it is not the best place to multitask. Doing a couple of takes of a song and running out to check your email to talk to someone about video production really is not good.
I think performance art comes from a simple place of wanting to express things beyond just sound.
