A kite needs to be tied down in order to fly. I learned how important restrictions can sometimes be in order to experience freedom.
Damien Rice
Being able to walk out of the studio after a week of intense recording and jump into a cold sea and sit in a hot spring and soak for a few hours completely resets the whole system. Really refreshing. For me, it's all about stepping out of the ordinary. Even psychically.
Sometimes you have to step away from what you love in order to learn how to love it again.
I want to get comfortable with my insecurities until I am no longer insecure. I want to be comfortable in my skin so that I do not need to dump any of my discomfort onto someone else in the form of judgment.
I'm not the guy that wants to be famous and make loads of money and sell loads of records. I don't want that. I just want to be true. I want to be... I want to serve music. I want to be honest.
Everyone is capable of everything.
Inside, I've got a real purist desire and dream about the music. I like the idea of being able to carve out a kind of magical, colourful, artistic, inspirational life. And the reality just turns out to be quite different, working with the business to bring this thing you have created into the world.
I live with myself. I wake up with myself, I eat, and I take a dump with myself. I don't see anything special there. I do all the same things other human beings and creatures do. I don't see any need to be telling the data of the day of this particular human being by posting it on online. It's not interesting to me.
The more I push myself to really live and really experience things and step outside of my comfort zone, the more the songs are allowed to flow.
I don't have a craving for money. And I don't have a craving for fame.
I have an abundance of enthusiasm; however, it would be foolish to think I can predict a future that doesn't exist.
I opened up every can of worms I could. I got to the place where I would peel back one layer, and then another layer, and the stuff that would come up underneath was so inspiring, it made me want to write about it.
I am really curious about life, about why we are all here. I notice my skin is ageing, things are changing, I've seen people dying, so that's the train we are all on.
I do not want to be a robot, a cog in society who answers 'yes' because 'yes' is considered the appropriate answer. Neither do I want to be a protestor. I just want to seek out what lies underneath the veils of politeness and programming that I've been given as a person in this society.
The thing running through me is the same thing that writes songs. It's the fighter about to get into the ring. It's like, I'm not here to entertain you; I'm here to get this out, whatever it is.
I don't want to stand in front of a whole lot of fakeys. If I'm going to meet someone and say hello, I want to feel like I'm really meeting that person, not a masked version. I want to give that to people when they meet me. You don't have to like it. I'm not looking for you to like it; I'm looking to be myself.
When I'm in a place like Iceland, I allow myself to take a little more time to divert off onto other paths creatively for a while and see what comes to me.
Music enables me to cleanse and shed the things that I feel are holding me back from growing, or growing up.
The best restriction I learned was getting into the habit of doing something, even if I didn't feel like it, instead of running away from it. Sometimes good work needs to be earned, and when you can overcome yourself, the muse notices and celebrates.
I've learned very, very, very clearly that money does not equal happiness or security, either.
I want to keep a thread between the studio and the stage, and I want to flow more easily from one to the other.
Leonard Cohen has a way with words and with humor that remind me to lighten up, which I appreciate very much.
Each song is a small universe to me. Each song has a story of its own. Each has a full life to express in order to be complete, so it often happens that the building to a big crescendo feels right in the recording or writing process.
When I started off in music, I started with a real innocence, a real love for the instrument, the writing the songs, the playing the songs and the sharing and the recording and experimenting. It was exciting. Then, this thing called success came, and something happened at some point where I became disenchanted, and I lost the innocence.
There are a bunch of songs that I think are beautiful recordings, and I'm proud of them, but I've no interest in listening to them.
There's a Nina Simone record that I love, 'Live at Vine Street,' and she sings flat on it. I can imagine she might've told the record label, 'Oh, God, you're not releasing that!' But I'm glad they did.
I was on paper earning more money and having more success than I'd ever had. And it was also the most miserable I've ever been. When those things collided, I realised something was off. That's when I started poking around to figure out what was wrong.
I just don't like to do a lot of the normal things expected of other artists. I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm just trying to stick with what it is I want to do.
