“Like I said before, when we go into our creative element, we gravitate to the things that are the most important and the most interesting to us. I’ve always taken the esoteric, spiritual route, and it filtered my desires and my understandings and my seeking nature through my music.

“Some people are interested in sex or love or fast cars or whatever, and if that’s important to them, that’s fine. Other people want more of an understanding of reality. In the whole scheme of the Real Illusions trilogy, The Story Of Light is part of it. So in talking about The Story Of Light and the spiritual concepts of it, I’d have to include the Real Illusions trilogy.

“When I sat down to make the album, I took the same approach: What do you want to do? What do you like the most for this? It doesn’t encompass my entire desire for creative output, because I have released orchestra records, and I haven’t even brought up the Sound Theories releases, because we’re talking about studio albums.

“With the song The Story Of Light, it was another one of those moments of clarity that artists have when they go, ‘Ahhh! I know what I want to do.’ And I wasn’t thinking about anything else. I wasn’t thinking, Is radio going to like this? Are fans going to like this? The fans will like what is most inspiring to you. That’s why Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie and Alice Cooper and Led Zeppelin were so successful. It just so happens that the things they were most excited about were more accessible than the kinds of things that I’m excited about. [laughs]

“If you listen to Charlie Parker, he was totally engrossed in what he was doing at his potential. You can’t find your potential unless you’re really excited about something. That’s your armor through the storms. That’s what you need to create, and you can’t do that if you let distractions get in the way. And when I say ‘distractions,’ I mean ‘my noise.’ You have to get away from that if you’re going to create what you want to your fullest potential.”