I have a notebook of concepts. There are titles everywhere if you are looking for them. I pull from them. There is a secret list that I keep for myself about what I want to sing about, and those are the ones I know I am not going to give up for someone else.
I think my songwriting might be a little more on the darker side maybe.
Some actors pride themselves on disappearing into a role. I'm into the game because I like experiencing and exploring themes, so I put a lot of myself into the person.
I've always been attracted to themes of isolation in my work - in my independent work and my DC work.
I never thought I would work in mainstream superhero comics or Valiant or Marvel. I just set out to make the kinds of stories I wanted to make, which at the beginning was small personal stuff like 'Essex County.'
I feel that people really feel they've got a part of me when they listen to my albums and the themes just show themselves.
The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.
No matter what writers say, most stories are about ourselves. The facts might change a little, but not much.
I don't see any of my records as any more or less conceptual than the others, and I don't really plan some overall idea in advance. The songs all get written under the umbrella of a certain time in your life, and it's natural to find themes that repeat within these periods.
Basically, I'm motivated to write about sociopolitical issues as well as relationships. I think those themes have stayed with me throughout my life.
It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting his whole self into it, quite unawares, presenting as if in allegory the basic themes and problems of his life.
I write best about two things, which is evident from the cover of So Far Gone: the constant quest to understand love and money.
I write about the things that haunt or obsess me.
I think it's difficult to be honest about certain aspects of my work without acknowledging that I have experienced or felt or questioned certain of the themes in the books.
What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.
One of the goals of life is to try and be in touch with one's most personal themes-the values, the ideas, styles, colors that are the touchstones of one's own individual life, its real texture and substance.
I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.
I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying not to think about.
I'd already made the decision before I'd even read it-just because it was John Sayles. Then when I read it, the themes were actually themes that have been a big part of my life.
Jokes do finish themselves. I really do see them as ongoing conversations about personal themes that I ruminate on.
I know I repeat myself in all my movies, but I just let it go, let it happen. Clearly, I'm not finished with that issue. But they seem to me like completely different movies. They're definitely coming from me.
I've got my interests and my life experiences as I'm putting lyrics together. And if you start looking at patterns, you start thinking, 'Well, what am I really singing about here?' A lot of it seems to be a battle for some freedom against oppressive forces. That seems to be a theme in a lot of the albums I've done.
'Hill St.' was very good, but it was very impersonal work for me. I wrote about that place as if I was a visitor. It wasn't what my life was like. It was a great place to learn the craft of how to shape a scene, but I wanted a chance to write about more personal themes and obsessions.
I started realising that the themes running through all of my novels were really haunting and obsessing me about my own life.
There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn't bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.
