My favorite music is when the sound is supplementing the message. I don't think it's dramatic; it's cinematic.
I was always taught to be grateful, and so the question came early: What is there to be grateful for? Why is life supposed to be so good? That's still a question I try to answer all the time.
Four months after we released 'I Don't Want to Be Funny Anymore,' the album came out on EggHunt. Three months after that, we officially signed with Matador. That's not a very long time: half a year between the first flood and the final signing.
The main way that being adopted has shaped my songwriting is that I was asked at an early age to consider the circumstances that led to my life, and in a way, I was introduced to how fragile and unlikely life is from the beginning.
I guess the point of that song 'Troublemaker, Doppelganger' is trying to navigate the worth of beauty and if it's hurtful or helpful to value beauty. If it's a curse or a blessing. Is that something really negative and morbid, like the hearse, or is it the limousine - a glamorous symbol of enjoying life?
I haven't studied history - I couldn't give a discourse in medieval literature - but I am a personal historian, and I do a lot to take in the histories of the people around me.
I always wrote songs. Elementary school, middle school. It didn't feel more creative than speaking. It was just normal to do that.
I was adopted, and so was my mom. And so I just was in tune with how life can be intentional. I feel like maybe that helped me to not feel super entitled to a lot of things as a kid.
Usually, I'll just be walking from my house to somewhere else, and melodies and words will start coming up, and I'll have to run home to write it all down.
In middle school, you're figuring out how you're affecting people, and sometimes you're affecting people negatively. And what sucks is that it can affect people for their whole lives. I didn't realize I was a part of that.
I have a huge note on my phone where things just start popping up. It doesn't make that much sense to me at the time, but once a song is finished, I can read into it and figure out who the characters are in my life.
I can't imagine being in a tour bus. It would be nice, but I think it costs $30,000 a week to rent. And I can't imagine spending what many people make in a year on a vehicle for one week.
A journal is your completely unaltered voice - it's just for you. And if you know that voice, and you like it, you can bring it out to everyone else, and that's the most honest and vulnerable thing you can do.
I value the people who are willing to make themselves vulnerable and share work that is sensitive and maybe even hard to sing sometimes. Because that's the music that provides the most solace and solidarity to the world.
If there are people who treat me wrong, I either talk to them about it, or I don't talk to them anymore. It's been the most thoughtful and considerate thing I could do for myself and other people. I am going to try to do that forever.
Film is like sculpture, writing, acting, technical arts, all sorts of arts. And that's why I wanted to do it for so long, because it would include so many places for attention.
When I finished reading '100 Years of Solitude,' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I got really sad. I thought, 'This will never happen for me, for the first time, ever again.' Then I opened 'Beauty Is a Wound.' It's a completely different story and writing style, but it has a similar place in my heart now.