I feel like songwriting, for me, is kind of therapy.
When I designed 'Flower' I was thinking about making it a positive, almost like a self-healing experience. It's like therapy.
I went to physical therapy, occupational therapy, voice, every kind of therapy except mental therapy - obviously!
Songwriting is like a therapy, it's a connection that you have with another person, and I'm not scared of it at all for some reason.
I paint very quickly. And it just, it almost comes out of me like it's almost my therapy.
Baking is more like chemistry, following certain instructions and knowing what comes out in the end. It's almost reassuring! Songwriting is a creative process where you go into a session with nothing and can come out of it with something incredible in the end. I never feel like I'm taking a risk with baking, but always with songwriting.
To sleep with a woman: it can seem of the utmost importance in your mind, or then again it can seem like nothing much at all. Which only goes to say that there's sex as therapy (self-therapy, that is) and there's sex as pastime.
All of my books come from something that I happen to be working out at a given point in my life. It's kind of self-therapy.
All of my books come from something that I happen to be working out at a given point in my life. Its kind of self-therapy.
Songwriting really kicked in with the guitar. I was going through a lot as a kid. There had been a lot of transitions in my family. So it just became a total therapy, like most artists.
I love songs, and I love songwriting, and there's a standard of songwriting within Chicago blues in particular. I don't like the sad blues, necessarily; the Chicago blues is what I like, which is the kind of blues you can dance to.
Therapy is really good, so I'm kind of sticking with therapy.
I get told I'm a confessional songwriter, which gets on my tits because I think of negative connotations attached to the word "confessional". I don't like the idea of songwriting being therapy. I don't want to put myself so directly in the foreground.
What is the most fascinating kind of self-deception to me, and a kind that isn't necessarily unhealthy, is what Friedrich Nietzsche called "strategic self-deception." The kind of self-deception that you can engage in with your eyes wide open. You do it because you say, "There's things that I couldn't accomplish without this kind of self-deception."
The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.
I genuinely love to be by myself, but at the same time, it's such a relief to know that I have another person's head who I can go into and whose life I can live. It's kind of an escape route, almost like therapy. It's refreshing to know that I can go back to a place where I don't have to be myself.