They feel very, very different to finish. With a song, I end up playing it so, so, so much and shifting things while I’m writing so, so much. And then I play it and play it and play it, and through that process, I write it. Over and over and over—almost like when they’re polishing a stone and it’s just being thrown around inside that tumbler. The song rolls over, and it starts out as this very malleable thing. It’s the strangest experience where you start with absolutely arbitrary things—or so you think—and you’re making them up, apparently, but as you go, and through the process of repetition, things become so apparent to you.

I mean, nothing’s ever done. I don’t think anyone knows when something is really done. There’s just doing it and not doing it. You do it until you don’t want to do it anymore. Then hopefully, someone else will take it over and keep on doing it. Songs are not really from any individual. There are all these lawsuits about plagiarism, Led Zeppelin has been going through that lately. It bums me out. The idea of intellectual property is kind of a trap. It’s just a way to get by, which I guess is fair because most of us are broke.

Sometimes when I listen to it, I’m still editing it in my head a little bit. At a point, you need to realize that you have to stop and be outside of yourself. You want to take it seriously, but you also know in your heart that you’re making it worse by over-editing or over-processing or over-adding.

It’s funny you say that because I never have this moment when I feel, “Ah, I’ve finished!” I watch footballers at the end of the match, you know, the whistle goes and they’ve won or lost. Until then they’ve been giving everything and at that moment they know it’s over. It’s funny for an author. There’s never a finishing whistle. It’s not very spectacular.