I don't think I have enough of an interest in today's cultural mood to connect with or reject it. I'm compelled by the ideas that arrive when I'm not trying, and I follow them through almost every time. I feel fortunate that these days, there are a lot of them. You could argue that they are informed by everything I'm experiencing culturally around me but I don't, for example, look online for new music or art very often, and I don't think there is much in contemporary culture for me. It's a needle in a haystack kind of thing, and I'd rather spend that time working on a new song.
