When I sit down to make music, I try to enter a flow; I always open a blank session and just make something that I feel like making. Only after a piece of music is done does my frontal cortex allow me to organize what might be trying to come out of my subconscious.
I knew from a very, very early age that I was gay, although in the social environment in Venezuela, you don't ever let that be known.
I want to make music until I die.
Making music can get so emotional that, if you don't set limits for yourself, it can push you or the person that you're making music with to a breaking point.
I hoped that being attracted to men might go away, but what I never ever hoped would go away were the feelings of femininity, and of softness and fragility, that could live inside of a boy. They were private, but they were mine.
I've learned a lot from every musical collaboration I've ever had, but there's something about my relationship with Bjork that is special to me.
I always make a point to make my records different. Let's say I have a record that's influenced by hip-hop in an abstract way; for the next record, I'd try not to do that. They are all connected in a personal way but it's important not to repeat myself, because then I can always learn something about myself through my work.
The first CD I bought was Brandy and Monica's 'The Boy Is Mine.'
I kind of roll my eyes when people say they make music for themselves or they make art just for themselves, because, maybe in their head, what that means is that they're making it for someone who they don't think is real. Their audience isn't real. But it's still a communicative act. It's still an outward manifestation of longing.
When I was about 13, and I would write in my journal, I'd be like, 'I just watched 'Spice World,' the Spice Girls movie, and I loved it.' Sometimes I would sign them with the name Xen.
A mother isn't someone who does it on purpose; mothers are who they are, and just by existing, they affect the way other people negotiate with the environment and with themselves.
It's not about living my life as a boy or a girl - but I'm also not trans - it's just that one day, you wake up feeling masculine, and one day, you wake up feeling feminine. The flickering in between those two states is what's most fertile for me.
With song titles, I try to keep a healthy sense of humor while saying something at the same time.
Someone can only be vampiric if you allow it.
I've never written a happy love song.
I exist in agreement with all the weird chaos, destruction, and agony that is undoubtedly part of the texture of being alive.
I want to be interested in the music I make until I die. That's more important to me than the size of my audience.
I'm an all-or-nothing person.
I never judge my song titles; I just spit them out.
It's impossible to exorcise the darkness out of you. We can pretend it's not there until something bursts.
