I was an alto and was in a lot of choirs growing up.
In our culture the way women have been represented in American film had a pretty big impact on my self-esteem and I'm sure it did on a lot of other girls. I think they have a greater psychological impact that anybody's willing to talk about.
I had this instrument that I built in high school. It was a huge, six-foot-long stringed instrument, and I started playing with that amplified and singing through power electronic stuff. I played those shows, and it would blow the lid off of everybody, and everybody would flip out.
I have my own cosmology that's kind of like an esoteric mix of a lot of different things that work for me and that to me, are worth exploring. There is a little bit of the archetypal Christianity that I've kind of reconciled because when you're raised that way, inevitably that infrastructure will persist into your adulthood.
It's important to me to create archetypes of human experiences and make them so that the song has a sense of purpose when you experience those emotions. You know, just making people feel like they're not alone.
I like baroque things.
When I went through puberty I had a huge rebellion against movies. I was so upset with how they brainwashed me that I didn't watch movies for years.
My parents are musicians. I was listening to the radio and recording songs off the radio on cassette tapes and playing guitars and pianos. Just emotionally responding to music from a very young age.
As a teenager, I really loved Catherine Ribeiro - extremely powerful, wild, improvisatory voice. I loved old psych-rock bands, and Michael Hurley, and Harry Nilsson. And then later on I discovered the famous European singer Demis Roussos, who used to be in Aphrodite's Child.
What is the consequent effect on a society of beings looking for themselves in the myths on the screen? It's safe to say that they have failed us, but I can't help it... I love Movies.
I can't stay within the constructs of societal expectations.
I think art should stand in its own neutral place, because I think that's how reality always is - it's this duality of being both hopeless and also full of hope.
I can't read Jodorowsky's Twitter every day, firstly because I can't go on Twitter every day, but secondly because homie is an intense excavator of the human soul.
I've always been very progressive and as much as I play Old World music, I have this progressive tenacity to keep adding futuristic elements in subtle ways where you won't notice.
There's a lot of artists out there who are pretty big but don't write their songs, they just have a lifestyle brand. These are all things that I think are a great enemy to music.
We thought the Internet would enlighten everyone, but it's given everyone access to more ignorance, and given ignorant people an opportunity to organize themselves and congregate.
I really like Adam Curtis' 'Century of Self.' It's about how artists have failed the general public by being so exclusive, like being in an echo chamber. I was definitely more like that in my early twenties - my music was completely inaccessible.
Lamantia is faith building, encouraging poetry in that it abstractly hugs you by finally capturing the inexpressible. It's an experience similar to relief, reading his poems.
This record was kind of, like, innocent. It's called 'The Innocents.' So it's the concept of being young enough to not really understand the implications of your decisions and then kind of feeling the weight later and being, like, but I was innocent. Like, did I deserve this?
Our desire for interconnectedness, our desire to be seen, our desire to be acknowledged, our desire to be liked - these are all deep needs, these survival instincts we've evolved to function in a tribal society.
