Having bought the colours, an easel, and a canvas, the next step was to begin. But what a step to take! The palette gleamed with beads of colour; fair and white rose the canvas; the empty brush hung poised, heavy with destiny, irresolute in the air. My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto.

I don’t know. How do you start a project?

With a lot of fear and trepidation. It’s totally improvisational because I work with collage, and cut up found warehouse paintings. I’ll sometimes stick a fragment or two on, and just try to figure out where to go from there. I’ve begun to think that I make each piece so differently from the other, and I don’t think that’s the way the art world likes things at this point. I think they like increments of change. While you would know it’s my work, I think I just always liked the challenge of how I’m going to compose. I get myself into a lot of trouble and hot water, and I just have to work on it, and work on it. I think that’s why some of my paintings are so awkward and odd, because I’ve had to deal with mistakes that I’ve made, and tried to correct them in some way.

One of the things I worked on with this album was focusing on the lyrics and the melody more so than everything else. A lot of my songs have started with the music and the texture, and then the lyrics and melodies are all framed inside of that. I wanted to do the opposite with this one and have melodies that could stand on their own without the instrumentation. I wanted it to sound just as natural if you were walking in the woods, whistling them as they do with accompaniment. A lot of these songs started with melodies that I would hum into my phone while I was walking somewhere. “Dancing in the Club” and “All Fucked Up” were both written that way.

I’m very much like Hans, yes! I think part of the reason is just because I learned from Hans, he has been a big mentor and a great friend for me, and I remember when he told me this, it actually made me feel comfortable in my process! We’re the same way, and so that actually made me relax a bit. Once I realized that, it helped me to see that the steps I need to take, you know, sitting down, thinking about what were my initial ideas? What instrumentation do I need? You just place yourself into the project and the ideas will hopefully come. Sometimes it comes easier than other times, sometimes it’s tough especially when a deadline is looming… But that’s the nature of the game. I just try to do the best I can do in the moment.