That's just the way people's brains work. If you want to talk about something, you have to reduce it to a form that can be understood. That's one of the reasons I'm not good about boiling down music.
When I joined the band I was coming largely from an improvising background, and the idea of a fluid rhythm that was really coherent attracted me.
For me, the voice expresses things that there are just no other ways to express.
I'm pretty resigned to the fact that I never hear music the way anyone else does, and I no longer find it surprising.
I make sure to hold onto everything, even the stuff I've gotten rid of, because if there's one thing I've learned about the band is that I'll bring stuff in, and it's oftentimes the stuff that I've gotten rid of that's the stuff that everyone else is like, "yeah!!!!"
I think I know what my bandmates like or are interested in or would be interested in doing. I take ideas and I develop them, get rid of some ideas, keep writing, and then new things come up.
When I dream about music, or think about music, by myself, I try to be as free as possible and allow my creative mind full reign.
Some of my favorite music is incredibly repetitive, or on the surface has an element of repetition. But once you go beneath the surface, you realize in the repetition is constant variation.
Any material can be treated in any number of ways. Sometimes I might hear something, or someone else might hear something, and say, "Wow, that sounds like classical music." Somebody else might think it sounds like a slow jam.
I can talk about feelings, but I can't talk about why this chord on top of this chord sounds cool to me. It just makes me feel a certain way, and I like it.
There's something bigger than improvised music versus pop music versus something else. What actually succeeds in being communicated are human feelings, things that people can latch onto and say, "Yeah, I feel like that sometimes." It can be inspiring or it can be something that keeps you sane when you're not feeling well.
