The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present.
Sometimes you give birth to something or you're part of a team that gives birth to an idea, and it grows and has a whole life of its own, and you feel grateful. It's just so humbling.
Sometimes travelling really intensely for a long time is like having a continuous nervous breakdown.
Sadness is a very interesting idea, this idea of sadness being some kind of default setting that artists will go into. And then I started thinking about this idea of sadness and happiness, and the idea that sadness is very loud, and happiness is quiet.
Our imagination just needs space. It's all it needs, that moment where you just sort of stare into the distance where your brain gets to sort of somehow rise up.
My life at home is super simple. My local bar with my mates, cooking for my mother, making tables, planting vegetables: It's the classic idea of the artistic existence.
My dad was quiet, angry, shut down. So my thing is: I express everything that's there. I want to get it all out.
Keeping the pen out of your hand as much as possible is the best way to write a song, in my estimation. But the pen must come in to tighten it up.
In Irish law, busking is considered vagrancy - you can be arrested for it. It's risky asking people for money in public. So it's not like it's a high-art job. And people who do it as a high-art job make very little money.
If you stand still in any city long enough, you see everyone pass you by. So you're in Chicago. If you stand on the corner of Belmont and Clark, and you do that for three years, you'll pretty much have seen everybody in Chicago pass that junction.
If you don't mark your successes, the day your ship comes in could be just another day at the office, and there's no poetry in that.
I've realized, you know, having turned 40, that rest is just as important as work. In fact, it's equally as important.
I've always felt that if I ever got cynical, I would have to stop making music because I'd just be poisoning the air.
I won't say I've closed the door on acting.
I pick up my guitar and play. Something might come, and then the pen comes out. Then an edit, until something comes out that you're actually satisfied with.
I only ever really take out my guitar when I'm miserable, which isn't necessarily a very good time to do it.
I love the idea of leaving some of the original abstract thought in, because the problem is that when you pick up a pen you become a snob, your own worse critic. You edit yourself in a way that is non-creative.
I guess in a way I just feel blessed to be able to make music.
I choose to believe that there is good in people and that everything is a lesson. Our place on Earth is to go deeper, to somehow get wiser. To have spirit.
I busked from the age of 13 until I was 18.
Do I create conflicts for myself? Sure I do.
As a busker, one thing that does not work is self-consciousness. A busker needs to be working. A busker needs to shed all ego and get down to work. Play your songs, play them well, earn your money, and don't get in people's way.
And I've always loved playing solo.
And for some reason, when I'm sad, I do listen to Leonard Cohen, I do listen to Joni Mitchell. I do find myself going to the music that's actually reflecting my mood, as opposed to sticking on Motown, which might actually bring my mood up.
A song is like a saddle: you ride it for a while, and if it's the right kind of song you can sing it for the rest of your life.
