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After school I moved to London to get involved in music. I took the whole thing very seriously.

The world is a complicated place, and there's a lot of division between people. The performing arts tend to unify people in a way nothing else does.

The arts have always been in and around my life.

Some people have human muses - mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it.

I like the idea of multidisciplinary conversations, so in that spirit, I try and make a contribution from the art world into the music world.

I've lived a lot of my life in London, so I often feel that I am a Londoner.

I've always surrounded myself with other artists. My close friends, people I've been in relationships with - I went to an arts high school - even my elementary school was arts based.

I like to work with artists who are as wide in their musical taste as I am.

I'm actually doing what I like doing, which is mixing opera music and classical music with soul and folk. And I was writing and talking about what I've actually experienced, and I don't think that's very common.

That's how I make work. Along the way, I take notes, I read about history and popular culture. Sometimes I act out things in the studio. I go back to my mother's hair salon so I can hear three voices going all at once. I pull inspiration from everything.