Maybe family is an eternal subject for me.
I think that soul, to me, is the theme of music that I connect with.
Every writer follows a theme, and mine is survival. If you can't figure out what a writer's theme is, look at the books you are attracted to.
The pull of history has been a strong theme in my life as a novelist.
I think that, as a filmmaker, you're always making the same film, regardless of how many different stories you tell. This is the case for me, whether I'm making documentaries or fiction films.
I don't think writers really choose their subjects. I think the subjects, the topics, the themes, choose us, and then we make the most of what we have. For Trollope, society; for Roth, Jews. For me, apparently, love. Why hide it?
The songs are definitely all about me. I am my favourite subject.
The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means that you can invent the language to say who are you and what you mean.
All my songs could speak about the same person in different situations.
Love stories are probably all I've ever been able to write or want to write.
Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within.
I think your teenage years define your musical roots forever. You're always looking for a theme for your high school years.
If there's a criteria that really gets me interested in a work besides any type of personal interaction with the theme, it's if I feel like this is the right piece of work for that director at that moment in their career.
As long as there's a strong theme that I can identify with, that's what makes me interested in writing.
When making a film, I'm never concerned about whether the theme is new or whether it's been done before in cinema or not. I'm led to make films if there's a theme that interests me or I experience something in my own life that confronts me with something that I want to deal with.
I'd like to do a concept album, with the concept being about me.
'Nowhere Man' embodies one of my favorite themes - the hero completely out of his element. It's really near and dear to my heart.
Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don't have to go looking for it.
It's thematic in my career, if you look at most of my choices. It is some level of exploration of maternal angst and maternal heroism.
So there's a choice that I made to tell stories that are still psychological melodramas about domestic issues. The challenge is to figure out how to make 10 films a career as a filmmaker, and that's a really challenging thing.
'Unbreakable Smile' was based off one of the songs I wrote for the album - it was actually the first song I wrote for the album without realizing it yet. I think I wanted to name the album that because it seemed like that was just the theme of that chapter in my life and just the theme of all the songs put together.
Of nothing but me I sing, lacking another song.
The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.
Look, then, into thine heart, and write! Yes, into Life's deep stream! All forms of sorrow and delight, All solemn Voices of the Night, That can soothe thee, or affright, - Be these henceforth thy theme. (excerpt from "Voices of the Night")
I generally follow my own compass and make films about what's scaring me.
