I wrote Hazel about and for my girlfriend. She’s somebody who sort of came out of the ether and pointed her finger and said “Your life could be like this.” She helped me liberate myself from a dismal life situation and helped me snap out of old habits and get back on my feet emotionally.  I’m not a religious or spiritual person, but I try see the beauty of what’s real in people and my surroundings and it doesn’t get much more meaningful than when somebody cares. These songs are just my attempt to embody caring back in the way I best know how to express things.

That’s not to say that I don’t like Sibelius or Dylan Thomas or Hieronymus Bosch or David Foster Wallace. There are infinite ways to make great art and I know what moves me and what doesn’t. I recorded Hazel in such a simple manner because I used what I had at my disposal at the drop of a hat. I think that there is something timeless about the guitar, harmonica, and voice combination and there is a tradition you can’t help but become a part of and also be judged alongside when you make a record like this and people will either like it or dislike it for this reason.

I don’t expect to make my next record the same way. It’s kind of like the three-dimensional blank space in the center of Da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks. The surrounding images are, of course, astounding, but it’s that empty space where it feels like you can poke your head in and take a breath of air. So, for me, it’s less about strict minimalism, just so long as all the ornamentation doesn’t cover up the truth.

Brockengespenst. It’s a word I came across in Infinite Jest, which goes back to Thomas Pynchon and from there back to Goethe’s Faust. It is a German word that translates to “Brocken spectre.” The Brocken is the highest peak in the Harz mountain range in Northern Germany and it is known for casting giant and haunting shadows of backlit observers upon opposing clouds. It has something to do with the misty climate up there. I was fascinated by the immediate difficulty of the word, and then by the level of specificity it provides, coupled with its depth of built in literary allusion.

I may or may not be one.

Oh, man. The fact that our momentary three dimensions are moving through a fourth keeps me plenty occupied as is. I am, however, amazed and humbled by theoretical physics and astrophysics. If we’re talking layout of the universe, my money is on chaos theory with a possibility of multiple universes. I get very excited about the LHC at CERN and look forward to them possibly coming up with these answers.

I’m not very good at falling asleep, but once I’m asleep, it’s nearly impossible to wake me up.  When I do wake up, I typically wake up slowly and often find that my cognition of reality blends its way in to my dream state. So, depending on the dream I’m coming out of, it could greatly affect whether or not I awake smiling or in a state of fear. On some days, however, I either don’t dream or don’t remember my dream(s), in which case this doesn’t happen and I wake up feeling quite neutral. That was the case today.

Heaven is damp with deception. It is the concept that people have used to put other people through proverbial hell for their own personal gain. There is no heaven or hell. There are utopias and dystopias and everything in-between here on earth and those are up for debate.

I was taught to ski when I was two years old. Before I decided to take music seriously, I wanted to be a professional skier. I don’t do it very often anymore, but I still dream about it sometimes. There is something so visceral in slicing down a mountain over snow and ice that feels both like conquering something great and merely a controlled fall. It is a moment-to-moment experience that at the slightest little bump could go horribly wrong, but if you’re paying attention, you just might keep it together.

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