if being afraid is a crime we hang side by side

One thing I did notice quickly, in music, is it’s hard to convince people that you’re not telling your own story. You spend a lot of intellectual energy going, No, no, this is not my story. But then you grow up and you go, Look, if I tell you a story, there’s a piece of me in it. I have come all the way, full circle, from “none of my work is autobiographical” to really believing that all work is, to some extent, nonfiction. It doesn’t matter what you’re writing; you’re telling me something about yourself. I used to find this terrifying, and now I find it kind of comforting. It means down there, at the bottom, at your core, there’s something that’s you, and it always tries to make itself known in everything you do.