Asha Saluja is a rare mix of being a very serious taskmaster, but also a caring person who understands that creative work is made by real people with emotions and lives. She kept our ship running with compassion and also contributed lots of great ideas when we were developing the show.

“Always remember that if you’re working too hard,” he said. “You’re going against the current. Just stop, relax, and go with the flow. Let the water take the lead.”

What are you unwilling to feel?

Allowances — for grief, for pain, for childbirth, for illness — have been so hard to come by, I think, because we discount the body. Worse, we hold it in contempt compared to the mind, a proxy for religious spirit, so that the reality and risk of cruelty and brutalization are minimized and ignored.

Anxiety, of which worry is a component, is essentially just unfocused fear.

It’s not that there’s some metaphysical concept of beauty that rules the world — beauty is a human experience. It’s something that has to do with how humans react to the world and perceive the world. And it’s notoriously thought to be subjective, but it’s not entirely subjective. There’s a very rich history of art objects and music and what people ... See more

I feel totally overwhelmed by the state of the world, but I think music and creativity, to me, is a way of exploring what's possible. There's always something when I'm making music that I didn't see that comes from nowhere and appears. When you go to create something, you're opening yourself up to possibility. It is a way that I continuously touch ... See more