Why even live? If that's your goal, if you're just clamoring your way to the top, I mean, why even have a life? Somebody was telling me the other day about the lives of investment bankers who work ninety hours a week and how it affects their patterns of consumption.

Before I had a kid, I was off in some kind of cosmic state all of the time, and thinking about the world beyond, thinking about intellectual stuff. And then, after I had a kid, just the whole process of giving birth is just so earthy and grounding and insane and it's all just an intense physical ordeal.

It's the sense of walking back into the Garden of Eden or something like that. Where suddenly everything is perfect and you see how you're connected to everything in the world.

I started off in architecture, and I just couldn't fit into the vibe there. I just felt more at home in the Art Department, so I just ended up there. But I would be an architect if it didn't require so much engineering.

The closest thing I could think of that men go through is like a prisoner of war being tortured, and then coming back from that experience. It's traumatic and grounding and makes you commit to the world. Also, because you want all of these things for your kid.

Most of the musicians that I'm playing with now have jazz backgrounds, so they're comfortable with improvisation. And they all know to make eye contact with me, and I'll give them some kind of sign when I think that the song's ending. Or maybe I don't even have to, because they all sort of feel it at the same time.

You've got to deal with the world with all of its troubles, while you've still got this alternate image. It's not about being in a different place or being in heaven, it's about seeing the world through magical eyes for a moment, and then being back in that same world, and everything is dull and gray. Having to remember the color.

Like the oxytocin you get as a mom makes you forget everything constantly. And I'm a totally different person after having a kid.

I think parenting actually makes you lose pieces of your soul again, because they go off, into your children. Or, I mean, I am so fragmented, and I'm such a spacey person.

I'm totally a narcissist, so I was doing all this performance and having lots of weird ego time, and learning to set aside my love for the ego and find a deeper love for myself and through that seeing myself as one with all beings. And through loving myself, loving all people in the world, that was my cure for narcissism, the only cure.

I think, I just always want to leave the door open for, you know, I don't want it to be finished. I've never gotten sick of a song, I've played them over and over and over again, and if I get bored with something, then I'll just change that thing.

I remember there was this one lady shaman who said that having children puts a hole in your soul. And the only way to get it back is for your children to die. And, you know, monks don't have families.