I was very aware of performers who have a persona, whether it's Siouxsie Sioux or Patti Smith or Lydia Lunch, and I'm just this middle-class girl coming from a more conventional upbringing, this California person. But in a way I felt like it's important to represent the normal.
I came from the most orthodox background you could ask for.
I come from a very normal day job, a very normal upbringing, so I had six or seven years working in an office nine to five in human resources. I had the normal life and kind of thought maybe this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life but still had that passion and that yearning for music.
I was home-schooled, was always very close with my mom and was very straight-laced and square. I was never the rebellious one, and I never threw hissy fits.
I come from a very straight and adjusted suburban background.
When I talk about my artist parents, people imagine a bohemian environment and think, 'Aha, so that's where he gets it from!' But we were as white, straight, and middle-class as the next family on our white, straight, middle-class housing estate.
I didn't play any extreme sports growing up. I never surfed, and I grew up in Santa Cruz. I was very good at doing what I was told, taking direction, and staying middle of the road. I mean, they called me 'grandma' in college.
My childhood was as conventional as you could get. I think I probably created 'Arcadia' with a certain amount of wishful thinking. I would have loved to have more looseness and freedom and community.
It was a perfectly average well- adjusted childhood, not a bit unlike that of millions of other individuals.
