One thing that's really important to me in my music is mystery.
I did study with Anne Carson briefly in Michigan. She taught there, and that's where I first encountered her, in her class.
I like mantras and repeating things, like in pop music, where you repeat a line over and over again. It's just so beautiful.
I basically just write stream of consciousness to a certain extent. I let the song kind of go where it wants to go.
Musical themes developing is a lot of what classical music is based on, and exposition and recapitulation - these kinds of things I find oppressive.
I'm not an unhappy person - I'm just an anxious person. It runs in the family.
Most records are usually not united by one specific story, but that seems to be something that I like and that I find easy to do.
All I ever know is what I want to do next.
It's hard for me to get shows in the U.S. It's that simple. I don't know what that means. I think it means there's not as much support here for my music?
I usually like to hide my vocals behind the music. I don't like to hide them consciously, but I have a tendency to prefer the vocal at the same level as everything else and put lots of reverb on it.
In high school, I would secretly play Joni Mitchell songs all the time. That's when I started singing and playing at the same time, and I got really into doing that.
If I feel like I'm myself, then I'm very uncomfortable.
I've never felt at home anywhere.
In L.A., you can play forever, and no one around the world will hear you.
I started writing music as a composer in school, in the classical tradition.
To me, the process of art is very much a process of translation, of borrowing.
I take music very seriously, but it's important to me that my music is - I don't know if 'intuitive' is the word, but there's a really important element of something kind of mysterious. It's not academic or esoteric.
I really love working with Ramona from Nite Jewel. We've kind of grown up together.
If you've ever seen paparazzi go after a celebrity, it's really freaky.
I prefer to work with mystery, but that doesn't work well in an academic environment. They want you to analyze what you're doing, which is toxic to the creative process for people like me.
