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Well, youβre part of the human fabric of experience. You donβt have to have cancer to write about cancer. You donβt have to have somebody close to you die to understand what death is. Definitely, the more you live, the more experiences fall into your spectrum, but I have songs like βChemo Limo,β or βOde to DivorceββI wrote that when I was 18. And I remember having people come up to me and be like, βYou totally described what it feels like to get divorced!β As a writer, you must have been told: Write about what you know. But Kafka didnβt. Gogol didnβt. Did Shakespeare write only what he knew? Did Camus? Our own selves are limitless.And our capacity for empathy is giant. Thatβs why weβre able to feel sympathy for, you know, a dog who has a puppy in its litter that died; we can feel for that, and write about that. Iβve never seen that, I just see things sometimes in my mindβs eye.I guess it sounds sort of hippie, and probably is, but I do feel that weβre all part of the experience. So in that way, I guess you donβt have to compartmentalize. You could just kind of let it all be.
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