When you're in pain, you're genuinely very, very alive, and that's beautiful. Especially emotional pain.
I think that when you're open, you're at your most powerful.
Even the most deft pen is a clumsy tool.
Politics, poverty, riches, etc - these are but backdrops for the grand cinema, the opera: the glory of your life. Sure, change the backdrops, make them better, but it is this inside-ness that matters most. Nothing else, at the last breath, matters, but your very own poetry. The glory of living.
What gets me pretty pissed off is the whole Monsanto engineered foods issue.
The goal is to be free and hopeful in the music. Because that's really the only intention you need. From there, every natural and powerful intention and feeling will, on its own, slide right out of you - out of your spirit.
To me, what I define as defiance, in some ways, is knowing the "reality" and having the ability to possess a realist mindstate yet still working towards the fantasy and still being childish. While still having the understanding and capacity that would generally inspire pessimism: some sort of more realist perspective that I think most people classify as adult. Anything like that and anything that's sort of fun.
When you're comfortable, you're not necessarily inclined to care about things that are contributing to your comfort. It's difficult.
Unless you are in the willingness and ease and ecstasy of some kind of moment, you may end up the editor of your thoughts and of your expressions. I find I'm that way on stage.
In my heart, I'm always in my rail-hosen.
I think fun is one of the best gifts we can give to each other. If everyone was having fun we'd be in good shape.
Sometimes, I have to really monitor myself, but the only monitoring job I really do on myself on stage is, Is this truthful? Is this truthful? Is this truthful? Ideally, I send it in a flow of truth.
My pain is usually caused by some sort of attack on my ego. So usually, pain is an indication of something that, eventually, I'm going to want to transcend. But sometimes pain is just pain that you sit through. I find it can have a really exhilarating effect.
It's so rare that I'll read or even watch an interview. I don't want to, either. I don't want to see other people's comments.
I get very heated about anything that is socially unkind.
I think the most important thing to remember is that pain passes. And artistically, the pain is going to pass. It's what you want to express out of the pain as opposed to indulging in the agony-and-pain mantra of songwriting that became such a hit in the '90s and still, all the way up to now.
What makes me deeply vulnerable? Probably the thing I suffer most from and have the most uncontrollable reactions from is still social anxiety.
Physical pain is problematic because it's very difficult to transcend that. Sometimes you're just in physical pain, and that's a bummer. Even then, there are beautiful things involved in the healing of that. I've experienced some.
The main thing that I've learned, artistically, is that if I'm in pain and feeling the budding of anger - if I absolutely feel like I need to write a song about it, I'll either need to transform that anger into something positive, or I'll just need to throw the song away. Because eventually, I'm going to want to transcend that pain and that anger.
I don't want an angry song with no silver lining ending up on my album. Then I'd have to play, or feel obliged to play, that song every night in repetition as a mantra of anger.
For me, it's very childish to tour on a train. And I think that's a powerful quality, to inspire childishness.
I'm pretty freelance. A freelance meditator. I float from one thing to the other.
I'm really into the basic idea of Kriya Yoga. The breathing that goes on in Kriya. Other than that, it's just communicating with the universe and getting the inspiration for different kinds of breath. Basically, I'm into the movement of breath and the shapes of breath. The different kinds of sequences of breath. I like doing that a lot.
Recording music is not really the healthiest thing for the body.
Sometimes I'm really communicating with the audience and I'm hyper-engaged. Other times my eyes are closed and I just let it be what it is.
