With all of the people in the world and all of the suffering and all of the things that people are forced to do for lack of other alternative, the fact that I had a subsidized education and got to go right into a life of playing music for a living, what a stupidly fortunate place to be.
The most rewarding possible thing that a songwriter or an artist of any kind can experience is to hear firsthand from the mouth of somebody else that they don't know the weight or gravity or intensity that something they've made has brought out in somebody else's life. It's simultaneously flattering and humbling. It makes me so thankful that I've been so lucky to be able to do this work.
If you make everything really on the nose so everyone knows exactly what you're talking about, it's often not as strong.
If the point of good art is to be somewhat subtle then it's not going to catch everyone.
I don't necessarily think I look to books for ideas, but sometimes when I'm in the process of reading a great book, I just think about it all of the time.
More than anything, being an English major made me more appreciative of authors and what an incredible feat it is to just finish a novel, let alone a really brilliant one.
I think books are just a great ticket to get you outside of yourself. You can not be you for a second and live in the shoes of a character, which is a special thing.
I was an English major in university and that got me into novels, but I read a lot of books as a kid.
When you put a halo on concepts - gender roles, religion, nationality or pride - or you put a halo on any topic - anything that you hold dear like the relationship between a father and son or a mother and daughter, what it means to be married or what it means to be single or what it means to be a free spirit or what it means to be an artist - if you just put a halo on something and say it's untouchable - "that is special and that is perfect" - you immediately close your eyes to the truth of it, because the truth is that nothing is perfect.
It's the sick and twisted male fantasy that we want classy ladies out in the world that make us look good, but in the bedroom, men want subservient women who please all of their whims. It's the typical bullshit of male ego.
You can't just look at the side of something that you want to see. You have to look at the whole round object and understand that there are parts of it that you don't like.
I think that's why art prevails: because it helps people in a fairly intangible, magical way feel more connected to each other.
There's going to be ups and downs and that you have to be okay with the downs too and embrace them just as much because they will teach you something.
If I write about something that I've experienced and somebody goes, "Oh my God, I feel the exact same way," then both of us are connected, and when you feel connected to people, you feel understood. You feel a sense of purpose.
You feel the weight of the world and you take things in and you are acting out from a place of being pushed and visceral. It's heavy. You can't be there all of the time.
I think articulating things through song is a good way of letting people know that they're not alone.
I think the only thing that we even have a small tangent of reality or truth about is right now - the moment that is happening right this second. Everything else is up for grabs.
The idea that things used to be better is fantasy. It's putting a halo on something that no one can disprove.
To say, "It used to be better," nobody can say, "Well, no it wasn't." It's like telling a story that is self-aggrandizing about someone who has passed away, when they can't tell the other side of the story.
I grew up with a rotary phone in my house and that seems a world away, but that's what I was used to as a kid. So now things seem complicated to me, but to kids born right now, they don't feel complicated.
I remember somebody saying, "I feel really bad for kids growing up around iPads right now. It's just too complicated. Life's too complicated." I think, yeah, but I remember being a kid and holding up a new piece of technology that was made in the '80s and my grandparents going, "Oh, it's too complicated." It didn't seem complicated to me.
When you ask my three year old if my iPhone is too complicated, it's not. It's all relative.
I can predict with some sense of certainty how life will feel in a month. I can with the same logic remember with the same element of reality or truth what life was like a month ago. All perspectives on the past are entirely relative.
The idea that things intrinsically were just better is so stupid to me because they never were. It's all relative.
I think the future and the past are equally hypothetical.
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