Basically we should stop doing those things that are destructive to the environment, other creatures, and ourselves and figure out new ways of existing.
So in 1987 I gave up all animal products and became a vegan. Simply so that I could eat and live in accordance with my beliefs that animals have their own lives, that they’re entitled to their own lives and that contributing to animal suffering is something that I don’t want to be a part of.
The solution probably doesn’t look like the problem. If we have this propensity to worry, to be anxious, to be depressed, to be angry – focusing on the worry, anxiety, depression, and anger? Probably not gonna be the solution.
Luckily almost no one buys music anymore, so selling music doesn’t really affect any of my professional decisions.
It’s heartbreaking that so many hundreds of millions of people around the world are desperate for the right to vote, but here in America people stay home on election day.
I’m just fascinated with the world that I can see, but I’m even more fascinated with the world that I can’t see.
It just seems like musicians want to sell a few records and put out a perfume line, and I think it’s so sad that there are so many musicians who don’t want to change the world.
Musically, New York is a big influence on me. Walk down the street for five minutes and you’ll hear homeless punk rockers, people playing Caribbean music and reggae, sacred Islamic music and Latino music, so many different types of music.
I feel like once the song is done, you put it out there and if people want to do bizarre remixes, if people want to make strange videos, great. You know, like chaos theory applied to the music business.
One of the nice things about licensing music to movies or advertisements is you can reach a lot of people who normally wouldn’t hear music.
Over time, I started becoming more and more aware of the vastness and complexity of the universe, which led me away from any sort of conventional Christianity.
For better or worse, I’m interested in just about everything: every different type of music I can imagine. I can never see a reason to choose just one type of music at the exclusion of everything else. Different types of music are capable of being rewarding in different kinds of ways.
Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed; and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
To paraphrase Paul from the New Testament, he has a great soliloquy about love, where he’s basically saying, if I’ve figured out the secrets of the universe but I don’t have love, figuring out the secrets of universe means nothing.
I won’t complain about touring, because I really do believe that a public-figure musician complaining about being a public-figure musician is just absurd. Like, ‘Boo hoo hoo! I have to stand on stage and people pay attention to me!’
Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don’t really know how the music business works.
What fascinates me about addiction and obsessive behavior is that people would choose an altered state of consciousness that’s toxic and ostensibly destroys most aspects of your normal life, because for a brief moment you feel okay.
If I spend 100 days in a row making music there’s a chance nothing will come of it. But if I spend 100 days not making music it’s guaranteed that nothing will come of it. So keep working.
I’m like a bad musical cliche because I bring my guitar on the road and try to write songs in hotel rooms.
No one wants to be hated, in public, by lots of people.