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I have sometimes imagined my own death and brought myself to tears.

My death, taking the light from my eyes, gives back to the day the purity which they soiled.

One day I can be ecstatically up, and the next, I can feel this real blankness, a deadness almost, which is scary.

In about an 18-month period, my mother got sick and died, and then I had a freak illness less than a year later and almost died myself. And I found in both of those situations that there was this expectation to have a kind of transformative experience.

I've had - I don't really know how to describe them, except moments of 'extrasensory perception' of some sort. I've also had sort of a 'white light' moment.

When my parents died, it became clear to me that there was an end in sight. Death was never a real thing to me. And then when that happened I realized I only have so many years left, if I'm lucky.

I guess I just always imagined that I was going to die, like, somehow on top. I was going to, like, go out in some sort of blaze of glory. I never thought about sort of fading into obscurity. And I've worked so hard at having a life, an identity, in obscurity and finding peace with that.

You know when you read that someone has to leave a show or a tour because they had 'nervous exhaustion'? Well, I had one of those and discovered that I was quite close to death. I always assumed that my lifestyle was going to take me at an early age, but when it was actually occurring I was, 'Not yet!' I pulled back.

The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.