Can you blame them? We have to filter so much information these days. But it does make it difficult for an artist. I'm 46 years old now. I've had a lot of life experience and my voice has changed. People who expect the same old me are bound to be disappointed.
Chocolate's okay, but I prefer a really intense fruit taste. You know when a peach is absolutely perfect... it's sublime. I'd like to capture that and then use it in a dessert.
I don't live in as much fear as I used to. I'm not afraid of the music business. Life is too damn short. I know what's important, and the tasks are very clear.
I guess the biggest thing is that I committed to a spiritual center before I do anything else. And I put some daily things in my life into practice and I maintain that, to make sure that I don't drop the ball.
I jump into the process, and the record begins to gel at some point. Then I begin to get a picture of where I'm going. But it's not always something I know on the front-end.
I really think that's what music and art is about. It's another way to connect to the divine. It's a real pure way of touching that deeper reality beneath our life.
I would step into a place of being lined up with a sense of purpose and my inner compass, and everything was going in the same direction. Then I'd get lazy and get off the track. And then things would start to fall apart, and I'd back up and get it together again.
I've come to understand my role. On some level, I provide the context for them to shine. I also know my role is the steward of the songs, and the center point, the artist that the stuff all revolves around. But I really try to honor that.
If you say that you're all about a certain something, and look back and see that the choices that you've made don't reflect that, then there's something for you to look at.
Or if I have my head in the results, I can't work with what I have, because I'm trying to force something to happen. And with singing, any time you force it, you tighten up. If you tighten up, you're screwed, nothing will work.
So all of these things are going on that make you wake up and realize you are a mortal person. You can choose to cruise through your life, but if you do, you're going to open your eyes at some point, and it's gone.
So I had to just kind of go back to the hotel, take a shower, sit quiet, dig down deep, warm up, and allow myself to move into some kind of zone. And then I remembered that a lot of my favorite musical moments are not about perfection.
So I really did stop and change what I saw I was about, and really try to put that principle into play as the center of everything - my friendships, my marriage, my career, my family, my way of being in the world. And that changed everything for me.
That's the great paradox of living on this earth, that in the midst of great pain you can have great joy as well. If we didn't have those things we'd just be numb.
