A Quote by Bat for Lashes

When I finally finished the 'Two Suns' tour, which went on for quite a long time, I felt like a bit of a husk. And I remember thinking, 'I need to spend some time in one place, and just be at home.' So I guess the first year of that three and a half years was spent just trying to kind of get back to normal again.
I recently spent quite a bit of time in Sheffield, England, which is where I'm from. I wouldn't move back there, but it's funny when you spend a bit of time in the place where you were brought up. You kind of realize how that place has had quite a big effect on you or made you a certain way.
At first, after my freshman year, it was kind of a joke, going into my sophomore year like, 'Hey, I wanna graduate in three years, two-and-a-half.' And we were just kind of playing with it, added some extra classes in, and then once I finished that following spring going into that next summer, it was just like, 'Hey, I can actually do it.'
I love touring. I can't wait. Everything is just normal when you're finally on tour. I think, for me, it's my happiest thing; I love moving around, and I have friends and family all over the place. It's kind of my time. It's almost like home. It's when I get to see everybody.
It was daylight and I drove everyone home - I was driving a Mini with John and Cynthia and Pattie in it. I seem to remember we were doing eighteen miles an hour and I was really concentrating - because some of the time I just felt normal and then, before I knew where I was, it was all crazy again. Anyway, we got home safe and sound, and somewhere down the line John and Cynthia got home. I went to bed and lay there for, like, three years.
It felt like 10 years, but I was actually in treatment for three-and-a-half years. I finally finished in April. Two years ago, I had a bone marrow transplant from my brother, which saved my life, so I feel really grateful.
I've got some horses which, unfortunately due to my job, I don't spend enough time with them, but they're my release when I get home. I go down to the stables, muck 'em out and spend a bit of time with them and they love me and it's great just going home to see them.
I was really unfit last year, so I worked out for a long time, then spent time by myself in Oregon. For about two months the only person I saw was my trainer. Every day I did a lot of running and I just didn’t want to talk to anyone for two months. So when I started talking again, it was like you would communicate wrongly, like you wouldn’t really remember how to speak. That was one of the key things as well as just reading the book, reading the script a million times, just figuring things out.
'Bonfire' was kicking around for a very long time. It was an idea I wanted to explore for a television show. Then I was given this weird gift of time when 'Jessica Jones' finished season one. I got really organized and just kind of banged it out, but it took a long time. It took two years to even have a first draft.
You have to remember that for more than half my life - probably until my children were born - acting was everything to me. I was obsessed by it, and I spent so much time just trying to get to the point where I was being paid to do it. Literally, I spent every waking moment thinking about acting.
I was a full-time mom for seven years. You go back on tour, you're back in hotels, you're ordering room service, and you're getting an itinerary slipped under your door every,day. You're kind of thinking, 'Did I go home for seven years, or was that just a dream?'
Honestly, I feel like I spent the last 10 years just trying to work, just get my hands on the best material I could. I'd like to say that it was quite calculated and genius, my ability to take one step forward and two steps back.
I actually started trying to be a professional writer with novels, and I wrote two that exist and are around... kind of. But they never really went anyplace in particular. I still like them both. What it showed me was that you can spend years on a novel, and then it could just be, like, OK, you spent that time and that's that.
I don't know what started me, I just wrote poetry from the time was quite small. I guess I liked nursery rhymes and I guess I thought I could do the same thing. I wrote my first poem, my first published poem, when I was eight-and-a-half years old. It came out in The Boston Traveller and from then on, I suppose, I've been a bit of a professional.
It's nice to have some perspective, when you are just touring, touring, touring, it becomes kind of a crazy experience. But, when I have time off and live my life at home, and then I get back to the airport and I am back with my whole family again. My brother, my band, my tour manager and sound guy get to re-unite, it's kind of an uplifting feeling to be rolling with such a crew and so much gear from country to country. It feels good.
I always felt that organized religion was just basically a theological insurance scam where they're saying if you spend time with us, guess what, you're going to live forever, you're going to go to some other plain where you're going to be so happy, you'll just be happy all the time, which is also kind of a scary idea to me.
I remember meeting my manager Eamonn for the very first time, and one of the first things he said to me was, 'You're fat. The first thing you need to go is get to a gym.' It was quite a wake-up call. I got a bit angry initially, like, 'The cheek of him', but I'm quite a pragmatic and thick-skinned person, so I just went ahead and joined the gym.
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