The whole celebrity thing is not something I'm overly interested in. I don't pop up at parties. It's just not my thing.
I think it's child abuse to have someone in the public eye too young. Society basically values wealth and fame and power at the cost of well-being. In the case of a child, it's at the cost of someone's natural development. It's already hard enough to develop.
I still indulge in a glass of wine or chocolate - treats are mandatory. Without deviating from the day-to-day healthy diet once in a while, it wouldn't be sustainable for me, and that's what I wanted: an approach to eating to last my entire life.
There was a period of time during the 'Jagged Little Pill' era where I don't think I laughed for about two years. It was a survival mode, you know. It was an intense, constant, chronic over-stimulation and invasion of energetic and physical literal space.
There's cleanliness to how I eat now. I'm much more in tune with my body, so now that I'm so in tune based on having become a semivegan, I can tell what foods affect energy levels. I can tell when I've been eating particularly high nutrient foods or I can tell when my glycemic levels are all over the place.
Down the road, I'll probably have a kid or two or three. And there will probably be political events or spiritual things to comment on, and humor.
My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.
I need to be performing. I need to be acting. I need to be designing a condo and ripping down walls and buying new plates and looking at fashion magazines. There always has to be some movement in the artistic department for me to not get really, really low.
The thing you can't underestimate is the true fan's intimacy. So Lady Gaga or anybody's true fan, I don't think they're going anywhere. There are people who are into commitment. If they're connecting with an artist, I think they'll be there over the long course.
I find as an artist if I'm not expressed relatively consistently, I get really depressed.
Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.
There's a continuity between what I care about in any form: I care about it in my music, in article-writing, in how I dress, in how I live, in my relationships, in how I navigate paparazzi, how I decorate my home. There's such a continuity between everything that I don't really care what form it shows up in.
But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.
I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched.
Peace of mind for five minutes, that's what I crave.
To me the biggest irony of this lifetime that I'm living is that for someone who thrives in the public eye in the creative ways that I do, I actually don't enjoy being in the public eye.
I saw music as a way to entertain people and take them away from their daily lives and put smiles on their faces, as opposed to what I see it being now, which is a way for me to actually communicate, and a way for me to tap into my subconscious.
At some point, I would like to write a book and other things, but I work best when there is some sort of deadline in my own mind, but not when fifty people or fifty million people are breathing down the back of my neck.
The thing I always default to is that I'll always be here to write songs.
The people that were invested in me staying the same way after a decade will most likely by default have to be disappointed.