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When I was in college, I studied linguistic philosophy. And in talk . . . You know, and it was basically a waste of time . . . a really fun waste of time. But the one thing that you learned early on is that in order to use language, language had to be . . . you know . . . terms had to be clearly, objectively understood. And a term like “Christianity”, it means so many different things to so many different people that – and I don’t mean this in a value judgment way – but it’s sort of a meaningless term. You know, because if you say “Christianity” to a Russian Orthodox, it means something very different to them than it would mean to a Southern Baptist or a snake handler. You know, Christianity to a voodoo priest or to a Roman Catholic mean very different things. So I . . . I almost don’t know how to talk about Christianity. I mean unless you wanna talk about, you know, contemporary, North American Christianity – specifically like the Evangelical Movement – which boggles my mind ‘cause it has absolutely nothing to do with the teachings of Christ.

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Recorded on: 5/29/07

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I would love to interview our president, G.W. Bush. Just . . . just ask him the simple question. He says that he’s a Christian. And he aligns himself with the Christian right. And I would just ask him, like, where in the teachings of Christ do you justify invading a country and killing 250,000 people? I know the teachings of Christ pretty well, and Christ never said never said go forth and kill 250,000 innocent people. Or I would say, as a Christian how are you a proponent of the death penalty? Does…and I would try not to be judgmental, I would just say, like show me, maybe there’s the hidden chapter of the New Testament I haven’t seen where you get, you and all your crazy evangelical friends get your ideas from, but I haven’t read it, and as far as I know no one else has either.

Recorded On: 5/29/2007

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And so as Americans I would just love our pundits and our politicians and people in the media to just say, “Look. No one . . . None of us really know what we’re doing. None of us are nearly as bright and together as we pretend to be. We all go home and cry into our pillows. We all occasionally drink too much. We all occasional do sexual things that we probably shouldn’t,” you know? That’s what bonds us as a species. And it’s . . . But we’re in like . . . almost in this sort of like new Victorian era. Like we’re okay with pornography, but we’re not at all comfortable with sort of vulnerable honesty about ourselves.

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Well I became a vegan twen – I almost forget how old I am – 23 years ago . . . 22, 23 years ago. And for me, it was the simple logic of, well, I love my cat. And I would want to see my cat suffer. And I certainly wouldn’t want to eat my cat. So if I wouldn’t want to make my cat suffer and I wouldn’t want to eat my cat, I guess I shouldn’t make other animals suffer. And I shouldn’t eat other animals

Recorded On: 5/29/07

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For better or worse, I’m sort of an autodidact. You know? I’ve never really had a mentor, and I never really had teachers. I sort of had to learn everything myself. And I, in some ways, wish that I had had, you know, a mentor . . . someone who could have given me advice. And . . . hmm . . . I wish someone had told me that if you’re having a degree of success and people are being nice to you, it doesn’t mean they like you. You know, because they’re being nice to the success. They’re not being nice to the person. I know . . . Again, it’s a cliché. And I wish that someone had told me to realize that making records is not a life or death situation. You know, I tend to take my work a little too seriously, and I almost feel like I need some, like, old crazy Mediterranean grandmother to sort of like say, “Oh relax. Stop taking yourself so seriously. Life’s supposed to be fun.”

Recorded On: 5/29/07

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Well my advice to other musicians first and foremost would be to make music that they love. Because if you spend your life working on something that you love and you never have success with it, well . . . at least you spent your life doing something that you love. And by doing something that you love, you vastly improve the chances that you will have success with it. Because the worst case scenario is to give up your entire life to work on something that you don’t love and end up having no success with it. So then at the end of your life you look back and you say, “Oh. I compromised and had no success.” So basically make music that you love, and be open-minded in your approach to other people’s music. Because I think a lot of people . . . A lot of musicians – a lot of artists in general – tend to be very rigid when evaluating other . . . you know . . . other people’s music or other people’s art. And then simple things like word hard and be diligent. And don’t drink too much and don’t take too many drugs. And allow yourself to be influenced by interesting other . . . you know . . . other interesting musicians. And study the history of music, ‘cause I think a lot of contemporary musicians, their understanding of music goes back 20 years or 30 years. And that’s just sort of a shame because, you know, I think musicians do their best work . . . When you think of George Gershwin and “Rhapsody in Blue”, the inspiration for that and the influences for that are so diverse going back 50 to 100 years before he was actually writing it. And that’s one of the reasons that’s such a powerful piece of music.

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Well, I mean, my criteria for evaluating my music is a lot different than the criteria that other people would use to evaluate my music. And from my perspective, I’ve had a lot of instances where I’ve, you know, ended up making music that’s affected me very . . . on a deep emotional level. That doesn’t mean that it always affects other people emotionally.

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I mean for the longest time you had . . . When you made a record, there was this like very simple . . . There was a simple way of making a record, and a simple way of distributing the record, and a simple way of selling the record. And now, if I’m finished a record now and it comes out in six months, I have no idea how people might buy it, or listen to it, or download it. I mean it could be . . . you know . . . all the platforms could be completely different in six months.

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The one thing I’m doing when inspiration hits is I’m sitting in my studio playing guitar or playing keyboards or sitting in front of the computer. But as long as I’m there, that way I can capture it and I can document it. And it becomes sort of almost like an ascetic, monastic vocation. You know? Like it’s just me alone in my small studio, which is sort of like a monastic cell. And I at some point . . . I mean, they’ll do document . . . documentaries on musicians. Like a behind the music on the dramatic things that are involved in making a record. And for me it would be the most tedious documentary in the world because it’s just me sitting in a chair in front of a computer or in front of a keyboard, and there’s really not a lot going on.

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The biggest thrill of what I do is not knowing where inspiration comes from. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m so prolific, is because I feel like as long as I keep working, it increases the chances that inspiration might happen. So I write a lot of music, and a lot of it’s pretty mundane. And a lot of it’s not very good. But every now and then, something that I think is really spectacular will happen. And if I’m not in my studio working on music, there is no way that I’ll be able to capture that. But as long as I just stay in my studio and keep working and working and sort of like slogging through, you know, the mundane aspects of just day-to-day, ritualized working, that just increases the chances that something great might happen.

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Well cause I grew up . . . primarily in Connecticut I grew up in Darien, Connecticut, which is a very affluent, suburban bedroom community. And I grew up dirt poor. My mother and I were on welfare until I was 18, which was very strange because every single person I knew in Darien came from, you know . . . they had very affluent families and came from a lot of money. And so it was strange. Up until I was 18, I was basically the only poor person I’d ever met.

Almost a sort of J.Gatsby almost sort of need to kind of prove myself sometimes. And on a positive side, luckily the public schools were really good. And all my teachers when I was growing up were very idealistic children of the 60s and 70s who saw public education as a way of really, sort of like, establishing this almost like progressive, utopian world. So I had great teachers and great public schools.

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Well because there’s the . . . the cumulative effect of all our actions. And things are pretty good, but they can always be improved. And especially like if you see the disaster looming on the horizon and you know can do something now to prevent that disaster, well you might as well. I mean it just sort of makes sense.

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I think things are fantastic. I mean it’s easy for me to be pessimistic; but at the same time you look at certain benchmarks for the, you know, for human progress. And life expectancy is up. I mean, just go back . . . Excuse me. Go back 100 years ago. Women couldn’t vote. Basically we lived in a country that was run by apartheid. Children were working in factories. The life expectancy for your average non-farm worker was about 48 years. So things are great. And one of the problems we have now is that things are almost too good, and we’re all kind of bored. You know? So we have this, like, desperate need to find . . . you know, to legitimize our lives and to establish significance for our lives. And that’s what comes with, you know, beating the odds and figuring out how to survive. So I don’t know. I mean sure, there are bad things going on in the world, but overall I think things are fantastic. And we also live on a planet that’s pretty good at self-regulating. It might not self-regulate in ways that we’re particularly happy with, you know. But I mean global warming for example. Yes, the earth is going to get warm and then it’s going to cool again. You know? And it’s gonna get warm because of human behavior. And then if we can’t adapt, we’ll get killed off and other species will rise up to take our place.

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Well the one thing that I take great issue with is suffering, because death is inevitable. I mean I’m going to die. At some point you’re going to die. Everybody watching this at some point, we’re going to die. It’s really not such a big deal. So death is unavoidable. Suffering, on the other hand, is avoidable. And more than anything else – more than global warming, more than terrorism, more than anything else – it’s the fact that we as a species perpetuate and propagate suffering. And I think that’s just . . . It’s so sad and so unnecessary, you know, that there are literally billions and billions of creatures who are unnecessarily suffering because it’s convenient for us.

Well I think we can all take personal responsibility for our actions. I mean very simply, that’s one of the reasons why I’m a vegan and an animal rights activist. I’m not so upset about animals dying. I’m upset about them suffering needlessly. And we can stop being involved in processes that are . . . that result in animal suffering, or that result in human suffering ‘cause it’s just so unnecessary.

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It’s hard . . . It’s hard for me to voice the personal philosophy without sounding like an overly earnest grad student. But essentially . . . I mean, what we’ve learned . . . the way . . . whether it’s through quantum physics or eastern philosophy, is that the world as we perceive it is not the world that it really is. You know, the material world couldn’t be further from how we perceive it. And once you know that, it has to affect the way that you view yourself and the world around you. And nothing is permanent, you know. All matter . . . You know, the current manifestation of matter is just an infinitesimal blip in time. And so we shouldn’t get too attached to it. You know? If you know that everything, including yourself, is gonna go away, enjoy it while it’s here, but certainly don’t be too surprised when it goes away, you know? I mean I think that as humans, we’re always so surprised when buildings crumble or when people die. And like really, these are the only guarantees that we have.

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You know, I tend to work alone. And I’m sort . . . a weird little autodidact. So I don’t have . . . I mean there are a lot of people whose music I really like. And there are a lot of people whose worldview I respect; but I can’t think of anyone who’s been a big inspiration or that I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from.

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Ideally my legacy would be that I have somehow figured out how to make music that people could find a place for in their daily lives. And I mean there are lots of different types of music. There’s music that you put on on a Friday night if you’re getting ready to go out or if you’re having a party. There’s music that you put on if you’re trying to fall asleep. The music that I make, it comes from a very emotional place. And my hope is that it will, in turn, reach people on a very emotional level.

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Well I’ve been making music now for 32 years. And, I mean, I’m a dilettante so I do lots of different things. But most of my life and most of my time and my work is just spent working on music. So it might be a very reductive term, but I’m pretty happy just calling myself a musician.

Well when I was growing up, most of my heroes were musicians. So it just made sense that I would learn how to play an instrument. And I think if you look at musicians, oftentimes they’re not very good at sports and they’re not particularly intelligent. Because if they’re good at sports or they’re really bright, they would spend their time when they were growing up either playing sports or working on computers. So musicians are the ones who are sort of left alone in their bedrooms in the afternoon learning how to play guitar and listen to records.

The biggest thrill of what I do is not knowing where inspiration comes from. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m so prolific, is because I feel like as long as I keep working, it increases the chances that inspiration might happen. So I write a lot of music, and a lot of it’s pretty mundane. And a lot of it’s not very good. But every now and then, something that I think is really spectacular will happen. And if I’m not in my studio working on music, there is no way that I’ll be able to capture that. But as long as I just stay in my studio and keep working and working and sort of like slogging through, you know, the mundane aspects of just day-to-day, ritualized working, that just increases the chances that something great might happen.