This is a French expression, silence radio, which is used in the navy, for example—when you cannot use the radio because the enemy is near. It’s not an expression I use regularly; I used it once, maybe, to describe my period of inner silence, which mostly happens when I’m back home, coming from Houston. The long weeks or months of silence. So it’s the opposite of inspiration; it’s the time of doing other things. Waiting.

You just have to remember that you’re a creator and not a machine. You just have to know when you’ve got to step aside and either move onto something else or just stop until the moment feels right again.

I’ve never felt blocked, but when I get burnout it means it’s time to switch to another medium—I jump around, don’t stay still. I do know that when I spend too much time talking about my work, the new ideas recede. What I mean is, I find that the process of making brings more ideas, there’s constant momentum.

Just by not giving up, I guess. It was extremely difficult. Oh god, I’m hesitant to think what this interview’s gonna look like… I don’t wanna seem like the guy who’s always doing difficult things. But yes, I had writer’s block. It was massive. And I came out of the recording session for Melana Chasmata thinking this was the most difficult album I’ve ever done in my entire life. And I had already thought that after Celtic Frost’s Monotheist and after the first Triptykon album. But now I find myself in a situation where I’m working on the third Triptykon album, and I have exactly the same feeling. So maybe I’m just psychologically sick. I don’t know.

By members of a human race who have managed to avoid annihilating their entire species and can thus still do some reading, and remembering.

Where to begin? How about working the archery range at the Sportsman’s Show in 1956? “The pointy part of the arrow goes at the front.” Or going door-to-door in 1963, when I was a questionnaire re-writer for a market research company, asking a 36-page questionnaire about bowel movements for a laxative company. “No one is going to answer 36 pages on that!” I bleated. “They’ll kick me out after three pages!” “Ah, but those who don’t,” they said – “those are our target market!”

At what age? It’s been a long path. I’ll stick with Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. (“Someday I’d like to try a book like that,” I said to myself, “only with a female narrator. It would of course be quite different.”)

As for motivation, I'd say it's a combo of 50s Puritan work ethic and finish-it-itis -- I hate not finishing things.

Long, lingering dementia, followed by death from choking on a fishbone.

The only way out is through.