A lot of really tragic humans have made incredible, beautiful art, and the art has always been much more difficult to talk about than the personalities behind it. As a culture, we started to mix up terrible personality traits with artistic worth. That always bothered me. Even though I became a drug addict, I hated that drugs were associated with rock music. It made me uncomfortable, to be honest. I'm not going to tell anybody what to do, but I had an intuitive sense that there are a lot of people that can't handle drugs, like myself.
But because it's so hard for writers to make any sense of art in a way that the art isn't already making sense of itself, we focused on artists for a long time. Then it became a lifestyle and a culture that was promoted out of lack of imagination and built on this idea that the personality is the art, but it's not. It shouldn't be revolutionary that the art should be its own incredibly freeing thing. And if you're going to focus on the artist, there's nothing wrong with them sharing their insights into how to live in a way that's fulfilling and not just promoting some sort of thoughtless, broken personality trait. I sound like a total square and I don't give a fuck, because I think it's revolutionary to be honest about that.
I like the idea that art and creativity is accessible to everybody—it doesn't have a criteria for how broken or addicted or depraved you are, it's the best part of you. And as you can indulge it and have it enhance your life in a positive way, isn't that preferred? It might be harder to talk about, but wouldn't that be the preferred outcome—that you have more people who are less broken and who are able to guide some other people through their brokenness to something more whole. I feel like that's a great way to live.