Sometimes I think of writing as becoming this antenna that picks up the vibrations all around me in order to find out how and where next I'll be steered.
Sometimes something intrigues me about particular sounds, how they work together, and I think "Okay, I've found something here; I'm going to take it somewhere." And sometimes just to find a name for that sound, whatever it is, ends up becoming a title of the piece or becoming part of the title.
I don't know what I did to my main bass. I've poured makeup into it, I've bashed it around - and we've gone in the back and cleaned it up... It sounds amazing and one of a kind at this point, but it picks up a really decent radio signal if you're anywhere near an antenna.
Every time you run a 35mm print, it picks up scratches. It picks up dirt. Sometimes it breaks, and you have to re-splice it. You lose frames. This doesn't happen with digital or Blu-ray. I think that's great. Because I love the new media.
Sometimes I'll have sections that I'm not quite sure how they fit in the puzzle of a tune, they'll get moved around; what I think was originally a verse ends up becoming the chorus, or what's an intro gets dropped as a hook, things get shifted around a lot.
Your heart has a powerful little antenna and its vibrations can be felt throughout the universe.
Chats are so new to newspapers, historically. But they're so incredibly valuable because editors/reporters/columnists get to find out what's on the minds of our readers, what you think we should be writing about, what ticks you off, what makes you happy. Sometimes it can confirm what you think readers are interested in; sometimes it can turn you around 180 degrees.
I write in order to find out what I truly know and how I really feel about certain things. Writing requires me to go much deeper into my thoughts and memories than conversation does. Writing provides the solitude necessary to reflect on being in this world.
I'm always looking to find order within the chaos. And sometimes when my life gets fairly chaotic, I'll take a walk outside. I think about the order and the perfection of galaxies of planets in orbit and traveling around space and thinking how chaotic the wars and divorces and riots on our planet must look from outer space.
Like a lot of us, sometimes I'm preaching to the choir, and sometimes my voice doesn't even get heard at all. Sometimes I think that what I'm writing now might not even have an impact for the next three or four generations. Sometimes I sit there and write, and I think, "It'll be two hundred years before they get what I'm writing about."
Sometimes life is so crazy, you have to go through something to be able to find out what you're supposed to talk about next, and I think that's what happened to me.
I think the more that I can find myself getting out of the way - like you said yourself - trying to get out of thinking too much, and sometimes something truly special can happen. That's the beautiful mystery of song writing - that you really don't know where these songs come from exactly, and you don't know how you came up with them - and god bless it that you should have the gift of channeling that.
Music is sound, vibrations, whereas paintings are vibrations of whatever you pick up. It's not actually an energy vibration you get from a groovy painting, but music and sound seem to travel along vibrations, you know the whole thing with mantras is to repeat and repeat those sounds... it's vibrations in everything like prayers and hymns.
I'm a music fan, and I can listen to the radio, or music, without thinking, "How am I going to screw this up?" [Laughs] If I'm really actively trying to think of a parody, then I'll have my antenna out, and be a little more proactive about it.
Sometimes on my show, I just play something out of the blue, and the band picks up on it.
Writing can be a lonely business. But gradually your characters, or the scenes and peopl from your past, begin to rise up around you, and you find yourself writing your way out of loneliness, writing into your own company.
Everybody's version of style is totally different and that's what I think keeps me going out on the street everyday is going out and kind of seeing the variations and what things maybe I'd never seen quite that way that I find very curious and how people will be able to communicate their own persona through their clothing, their posture, the way they wear their hair. I think all those elements end up becoming very interesting because I don't think I'm really particularly a people person. So for me I think it's interesting to kind of be able to read people in that way.