That's why people listen to music or look at paintings. To get in touch with that wholeness.

There are very few singers who know the art of creating music which plays with people's feelings and emotions.

In any art form, in Hollywood or in music, there is a handful of people who really, you know, move the envelope.

What you do in your art - TV, music, film stuff - touches people. And they want to touch you. So that's a blessing. I'm okay with it.

I think people are 'just creative,' and this can be expressed in a number of ways. Bob Dylan and David Bowie create both music and art.

John Cage is someone I got into as a visual artist, before I even knew his music. I don't think a lot of people even know that he does visual art.

I was attracted to a lot of different art forms - dancing, painting. But there's something about music that people hold so close. It's such a powerful art form, and that's why I live for it.

All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it's a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art.

And so many of the kinds of labels you get stuck with don't really tell the story; Progressive, Art Rock, Noise Music, Downtown - it ends up being a struggle to stay out of debates that other people are having around you.

It's not my concern to make a commercial pop record. I want to make a record of music that I would listen to, that is lyrically rich and has songs that people can relate to - more along the Jakob Dylan route: people who create for the art of it and not necessarily the monetary rewards of it.

As more people get into indie bands and alternative music, they're also getting more into other genres that fit those categories, like jazz and classical. It's becoming more rebellious to go to a classical concert. You're getting the younger art house crowd and regular students as well as those who are just curious.

You see Michelangelo and Picasso and you read literature. I had some innate inchoate yearning for that, but I never really saw where I would fit in. That's called art. And then something happened to pop music, which is that it became art under the hand of the Beatles, the Stones, and Bob Dylan and some other people.

I kind of roll my eyes when people say they make music for themselves or they make art just for themselves, because, maybe in their head, what that means is that they're making it for someone who they don't think is real. Their audience isn't real. But it's still a communicative act. It's still an outward manifestation of longing.

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