First off, I think nudity is taken differently in America, though they did make a fuss in England, too.
People have a tendency to see country life through rose-colored glasses.
I really don't pay too much attention; I don't go out of my way to read any interviews.
It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.
In the same way, I write some of my more difficult pieces when I'm at very happy stages in my life.
I'm doing quite a lot of painting on stones - little funny fish and animals.
It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore I keep reaching for instruments I don't particularly know how to play, and then I become excited. That gives me energy to want to make new things, and it forces me to hear things in new ways, which then can only help to say things in a new way.
I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.
Ideas for songs can come from something as simple as a photograph and letting my imagination run wild on an old photograph that I found, or to a film that I have seen or to just most of the time, just daily walking through life and keeping your eyes open.
I studied art just short of the level where you can earn a degree.
But huge photographs of dead bodies are slightly different. I couldn't find much humor there.
With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.
My father is actually a quarry man - he deals in stone. He also at one point had a lot of sheep, he owned a sheep farm, but primarily the family business was in stone.
Yeah, I mean I am somebody that makes an effort to go and see a lot of exhibitions, painting, drawing, sculpture.
I've always been very interested in the visual aspect of what I do.
When I write - I always write on my own - I demo those songs on a four-track.
I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or poets.
There is nothing more boring than doing singing exercises.
I do take enormous interest in what's going on. I try to see whatever I can, whenever I can.
I think I just speak on what the regular people are going through outside of love 'cause, of course, there's always gonna be a love song, but there's so many other parts of life... being lost, feeling your way around, what you gonna do next.
When I was young, I had idols that I thought were wonderful. I wanted to be just like them.
Ive always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.
And all of these writers offer me a greater understanding of what it is to be alive, and that is such an incredible thing art can do for other people. It made me want to try and get close to this strange, mysterious thing that people can do with words.
I don't think that much anymore in terms of 'write a record, record a record, tour a record,' because in my own mind, things have changed, in that I'm just an ongoing artist. I'm not quite sure what the next project needs to be until it presents himself, and then I know. I just follow dutifully while I'm being led.
I think Ive got a pretty good sense of humor.
