But what you realise after you've been in the business for a while is that people develop opinions about you that don't have anything to do with your music, they like or dislike you for a million reasons, they like or dislike you for your last record.
You have to kind of shift the way you look at life when you're in a group of people that you work with. It's not so much, do they make you feel good when you're around them all the time; it's how can you make everyone feel comfortable together.
I think that, often, the people who can make you happy are right there, and having them in your life would make your life better, but you can't see how to do it.
The nice thing about being on stage is it's not that I know what to do, but I have a very clear feeling that anything I do is OK. All I'm up there to do is express how I feel. Any way I choose to do that is fine.
I'm so busy trying to breathe through the pain that I'm breathing through the pain of being with people, and that is no way to spend a life. Eventually, they'll just go away, because you will make them sad. That's something I've proven quite adept at doing over the years.
I've spent most of my life living in cities where people are obsessed with looking down on people from everywhere else. You get so used to doing it that you start to believe it's simply what everyone does. It makes for an atmosphere of unwelcome that penetrates much of our modern life. It's a shame really because a couple days in Oklahoma will open your eyes to how much better it would be if the rest of the country was filled with a few more people from Oklahoma.
A lot of life is about how you feel relating to dealing with this person or that person. If this person makes you feel good, then they're a person to be around; if they don't, they're not. Being in a band is different. The group is the more important part, and you have to kind of shift the way you look at life when you're in a group of people that you work with.
I think the biggest, saddest thing that happens in our lives is that we just don't embrace the things that could make it better because they don't seem to make it better at any given moment or we can't decide how to get across the aisle to that person.
It's impossible having five, six, seven people in a room being creative together and not fight, because you want to fight. It's the only way creativity works, if you all put your ideas in.