My clothes don't make one a different person, just more of oneself.
Im so fascinated by the human longing for meaning. The way we relate romantically to each other is so much to do with our longing for meaning as well.
That's the beauty of song writing. You never know when inspiration will come or how it will hit, you just gotta kinda grasp a hold of it and make sense of it somehow.
When you work on an album for three and a half years, you're kind of ready for it to get out there. To have your songs reach people.
I think the idea of being on stage and playing for people, and being able to inject a little bit of joy into their lives is a really exciting concept for me. That's definitely why I make music. It's never been for any kind of materialistic reasons, so that thought of being able to be up on stage, and being able to give something to someone in a moment of need for them - that gets me up in the morning; that really excites me.
Music is my catharsis for that. It's an incredible blessing that I have this way of expressing myself through music and lyric, and I'm so grateful for that in moments of pain or of suffering - that I have this means of channeling it; it's really amazing. My band as well - having them around and being able to jump on stage and bond together and share that energy is really uplifting as well.
My process is to be by myself when I record. It's quite an emotional performance to pull off when someone else is in the room. I prefer to go away and have my own time with it, bring it in later.
Most of us are totally, completely misaligned. God-consciousness is up there, while most of us live down here at ego-consciousness. But what's up there can't recognize what's down here. If you were a frog, and you were trying to see what this room is like, what would you see? Just try and picture it.
The best investment you can make is in yourself.
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.
Our national experience in Americanizing millions of Europeans whose chief wish was to become Americans has been a heady wine which has made us believe, as perhaps no nation before us has ever believed, that, given the slimmest chance, all peoples will pattern themselves upon our model.