ABOUT

I don't think of being an artist or a musician as a career. Careers have ladders and résumés. What I have is a compulsion — a way of life. I make things because I have to, the way some people talk to their plants, keep a diary, or walk five miles every morning. If I stop, I start to come apart at the seams.

I grew up in Nepal, then moved to the United States. Along the way I learned you can lose a place, a language, even a person, but you can't lose the need to make something out of the mess that's left. That's where the work comes from. Sometimes it's a song. Sometimes an image, an instrumental piece, or a website you can wander through like a city you've never been to. I don't believe in keeping them in separate boxes. They're all branches from the same root: the need to create.

People say machines will replace the artists. But machines don’t ache to create — they only do as they’re told. They can't feel the quiet shift when you're so absorbed in the act of creating that past and future disappear. They can't know what it's like when the mind stops running ahead and you meet the work exactly where it is — in this moment, alive.

I use whatever tools are at hand: a pen, a guitar, a camera, a computer. But the tools aren't the point. The point is to make something that feels real right now — a place you can step into, stay for a while, and maybe carry with you when you go. If I've done that, I've done my job.