Aimee Mann

Everybody kind of understands, Oh yeah you take drugs and it does something to your brain and then you can't stop. It's easier to describe that shame, that horrible feeling of not being able to control your own life.

One of the things I've really gotten past in the last couple of years is the idea of being made uncomfortable by the way things appear, rather than how things are. Clearly in this business you have to contend with a lot of that.

I certainly understand that we're all trying to make a living, but I'm not thinking about that when I'm making it. And if that's your sole motivation, it's going to reflect that narcissistic greed, and you're going to hear it in the music.

Even fictional characters sometimes receive unwarranted medical opinions. Doctors have diagnosed Ebenezer Scrooge with OCD, Sherlock Holmes with autism, and Darth Vader with borderline personality disorder.

The turning point for me was when the Supreme Court installed Bush in 2000, even though he got half a million votes less nationally than Gore. It was nothing more than a bloodless coup and that's when I really started paying attention.

Software options proliferate extremely easily - too easily, in fact - because too many options create tools that can't ever be used intuitively. Intuitive actions confine the detail work to a dedicated part of the brain, leaving the rest of one's mind free to respond with attention and sensitivity to the changing texture of the moment.