All of my music is against the dark in a way. It’s like we’re on a road to ruin or path of destruction. It doesn’t feel like things are going in the right direction. Post-pandemic, it hasn’t brightened up hardly at all. And then there’s the internal. When you get older, there’s a sensation of twilight. Like, how much time do you have left? And music is, I think, the most reliable consolation for those types of feelings and fears and sadnesses. 

I feel very, very lucky that I somehow learned how to play the guitar and express myself this way. Everybody suffers, but you’re in a better condition having an outlet like music or comedy. I don’t think it means you have more suffering than anybody else. You’ve just adapted to it in a more positive way.

There are a lot of alternate versions of me throughout the new record that I contemplate all the time, that maybe stayed in Belleville, Illinois, or got into having a hot rod car or something.

Our brains haven’t evolved to deal with the amount of information even just television gives us. I think we’re still 60, 70 years behind in terms of how human we can stay in the face of being given tons and tons of awareness of world suffering instantaneously. Whereas 150 years ago, you were very focused on the community you lived in, and the things you were aware of were things you actually had some power to change. That part of our brains is getting beaten to death every fucking day, because the natural impulse is, I want to help. When you can’t, the next thing you reach for to scratch that discomfort, that dissonance, is, Who do I fucking blame? And that’s all we do. The solutions don’t matter anymore. That’s what I’m trying to override.

I was lucky that I wasn’t that ambitious. My ambition was not How much money can I make? or How famous can I get? Those equations would have resulted in very different decisions. I tell people all the time that my wildest dream was realized when I was in my early 20s and had a record and a van and a gig to go to. I didn’t see myself on a stage in a stadium. I saw myself on a stage at Lounge Ax. 

Rock ’n’ roll isn’t supposed to be conformist. If something smells in any way like it’s trying to conform, it erases an enormous amount of the appeal for me.

The best example of the idea of America, more than anything else that’s been created by America, is rock ’n’ roll. It’s a liberated art form of individual self-expression that’s very, very, very powerful and created by the least free among us. So I console myself in believing that I am participating in one of the things that is best about America. It’s an antidote to a lot of the things that are going wrong: this complete fucking debacle shitshow catastrophe that will end calamitously. But I know that this too shall pass, that some of these motherfuckers are going to be dead in my lifetime, because that’s just how it works. 

There’s no human interest that is safe from a flag, from the notion of a nation-state of any kind. In my opinion, nobody should do flags. You can’t be concerned about the human condition and human welfare and be nationalistic at the same time.

My wife, Susie, has a great moral compass. I want to be a good person to feel like I deserve her. We’ve been together for 35 years — 30 married. And we haven’t drifted apart. We’ve drifted closer through the shared ups and downs of life. I can’t imagine how you would replace that kind of familiarity and comfort. She is really good at reminding me that I am an earthly figure. If a good review comes in, she’s like, “Do you need me to get the doors widened so you can get your head through?” And she’s never questioned the need for me to be on the road. She’s sacrificed an enormous amount to keep the home humming and take care of two kids by herself. To be honest, that’s why she signed up. Maybe she liked the idea of me being gone all the time.

Being there for Susie through her health issues is not something I ever saw myself as having the strength to do. But over many years of learning how to be a caretaker, it’s made me much more … I don’t know. There’s this saying that religious people have: “God doesn’t give me more than I can handle.” 

Due to a series of unlikely events, I have an audience. It’s almost like a congregation. And there’s a responsibility to feel like I deserve that by trying to be a good person. 

There are a lot of people who come at you that know a lot about you and have a parasocial relationship with you, and it’s very disorienting. You’re not aware of what version of you they’ve concocted. And over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that I just have to be confident in my kindness but aware that I’m most likely not going to be able to give them what they want. Because in some cases, they want me to be their best friend.

The stage is a very complicated psychological landscape. We’re taught that it’s a show, that it requires a certain amount of show business. But the punk ethos is that, no, the stage is not really there. They’re looking at me. They’re seeing themselves. So I can be myself onstage. I’ve worked really hard to feel like the same person. 

When you have a guitar strung around your neck and people associate you with serious songs, if you say anything remotely funny, they fall out.

Somebody said to me once, “Every time I see you sing, it feels like I’m watching you sing the song for the first time.” That’s kind of an ideal.

I’ve been entertained a lot in my life watching bands I don’t like, because I’m still curious: Why don’t I like this? If I’m watching Saturday Night Live with Susie and she doesn’t like the band segment, she wants to fast-forward through it. I’m like, “Why can’t we just watch it?” If somebody’s standing in front of me playing an instrument, I’m going to pay attention. Because it’s fascinating. And depending on your mindset, you can get better at finding a way into what other people see in them, or you can bolster your disdain.

There’s something about music that I don’t see in other art forms nearly as much: Someone will play a song for somebody else to tell them how they feel — a song they did not write or record or sing. What other art form is analogous to that? 

One reason music is so healing is that it centers you in the one place you spend the least amount of time: the present.

As a lot of people that have migraines will tell you, there has got to be some sort of psychological component. The migraines have some connection to anxiety. I have less of them now. As I get older, I can identify where the anxiety is coming from. I can remind myself that I’ve survived when I thought I was going to die.

Regardless of how visible I am publicly, my particular set of mood disorders requires me to take care of myself in a certain way. Because I’m less able to cope when I’m tired. I’m less able to cope when I’m hungry. I’m less able to cope when I’m overwhelmed by social environments. I just know things about myself after being around for a long time.

When you’re an addict, you’re always an addict. You just have to accept that that’s what you are. Whether or not you’re active in a maladaptive, destructive manifestation of that addictive quality is up to you. And so I don’t try to fight a certain amount of obsession and compulsion to do things like crossword puzzles. If you can direct that energy toward benign activities, you’re not hurting anybody, and you’re certainly not doing the same amount of harm to yourself that you have the potential to do.

I’ve always loved guitars. And I’ve been able to afford them more as I’ve gotten older, and that’s really a thrilling thing for the kid inside of me. I don’t really have that much else I’m interested in spending money on, other than taking care of my family. Most of the gear that’s in the Loft, I have had some kind of interaction with in a way that’s logged away somewhere. When I hear something I want to try on a track, I pretty much walk right to the pedal or the guitar or the amp.

Writing lyrics is really about tricking language into saying things you’re not saying and creating an image out of words so you don’t have to say something explicitly. It’s making language do sort of bait-and-switch magic tricks. It’s built for the consciousness of the listener to come in and make something out of it for themselves.

My primary muse is other people’s art and music. Circumstances don’t enter into it nearly as much as people would think.

There’s a famous Gertrude Stein essay called “What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them?” One of the things she claims is that no artist is actually present for the creation of their masterpiece. Ego is part of what stands in the way of most creativity. I’ve had a healthy mistrust of myself and what my ego desires. And I’ve worked hard to not have that guy exert a whole lot of influence. I don’t think ego is bad. I think it’s bad at some things. But you need it when you’re finished writing and you’re framing it and mixing it and lighting it and making it palatable to someone else. You need a certain amount of audacity and delusion to make it exciting.

When I finish a song, and especially a recording that we labored over, it never quite feels as good as the ones that just happen. You’ve got to figure out how to turn off your default-mode network, the part of your brain that’s keeping track of time and who you are and all the things you need to remember to not be walking into walls as you walk around. In all the creative things I do, I’ve been trying to find more and more ways to turn that part of my brain off. 

When you have a really good, intimate relationship musically with other musicians, it’s built on faith that somebody’s going to be there to catch you when you make a mistake. When you play with your family, you start from this 100 percent level of acceptance and trust that Wilco has worked 20-plus years to get to. It frees up that part of your brain that can be apprehensive and there’s a little bit more permission to be yourself.

I don’t think anybody would regret spending a bit more time with their imagination, allowing themselves to be creative, giving themselves permission to make something that isn’t great or even good. Once you get in the habit of doing that and knowing that you have the power to make something that wasn’t there when you woke up, it makes it a lot harder to want to destroy things.