I'd always maintained an image so that people wouldn't approach me.

I start out making my paintings for me. I don't see it as a form of communication. Until, of course, after they are done and I want people to see them. And want them to be recognized. But while I am making them I just try to get lost in them. Kind of like it's a prayer.

What do you know about music, you're not a lawyer?

I think the Native Americans had the right idea about preserving and respecting the earth. Not just using it up. We are not the center of the universe and that we think we are will most likely be the end of us. Then nature will go on its way, with humans only being a faint ugly memory. And yes I am fond of animals or most of them.

I play music, I paint - these things come from your depths.

I guess I just want everything to be available immediately.

The paintings usually start as abstracts and then I look at them and look at them, and like a Rorschach test, I try and see what it is.

I think humor is actually a very serious thing. I think the people who shaped culture, for the better, in the last 50 years or so, more than almost anyone else are people like Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor and even Chris Rock, back when he was doing the edgier stuff.

The loss of music is very painful, and I don't revisit stuff unless there is a solid reason to do it.

I remember seeing McCoy Tyner in concert, and thinking that the music was incredible, but wanting to be invited in. I figured that humor was the way of letting the audience in. I've gotten a hard time about it, but I love to be funny onstage.

But, you know, I'd be happy just making music.