Sometimes I know, sometimes I don’t. It depends artistically, or pragmatically, on the steps that I’m taking. “How am I creating this?” Sometimes I set parameters to cut myself off, and I find mixed results. For this album, specifically, I worked closely with Cooper Crain, who co-produced it. Most of the time, I wanted to go five steps further and he said, “No. This is it. It’s done.” I found myself trusting his judgment in that. In hindsight, I think it was important for this album. It would be totally different if I just kept digging and digging. A lot of times, I dig until it’s totally decimated. Really, I’ve just turned something into nothing again. For this album, I utilized Cooper as kind of a guide. It was much more collaborative in that way, where he was like, “This is done.” Or, “Let’s push this further.” He gave me that foresight.

That’s a really good question. I don’t think you ever know; you just have to make a call. Finishing is acknowledging that there’s no further progress to be made at the current juncture. If you sit on a song for 20 years and come back to it with all the wisdom of your life, you could probably write a better song, but objectively, you have to get it out into the world in order to continue to live as an artist. So, there’s a sense of: “well, this is as good as it’s gonna get for me at my level right now.” Sometimes you realize that early, but it can take a long time. I think deadlines were invented by God to make art possible. I don’t think I could finish anything without a deadline, self-imposed or external. With the book, it was just: these people at Penguin, they don’t know me. They have no idea that I can’t do this. I have to do it because otherwise they’ll know that I can’t do it.

Sometimes some of the things I’ve been working on for years and years, they’re just not getting any better or not going anywhere, so they fade away. And sometimes you start something, and within a few days, it develops enough that it feels complete. Each piece is different and develops itself in a different way. Some artists make the same thing for 50 years, and that doesn’t interest me. My current show at Lisson Gallery will be my 18 th with this gallery, I’ve been working with them since 1974, and all the shows have been different. You don’t repeat a show. So this solo show is comprised of pieces I’ve made in the last three years.

Most EPs I’ve done have just been for fun, Bandcamp stuff, so I just stop when…I guess with EPs, it’s easier. It’s like, “Oh, EPs are usually four or five songs.” I know it will end within that bracket.