I think the starting point has changed for me over the years. I think with Court , The Disciple and the short film, it was the setting, the world that got me interested. It was very sort of driven by fascination and curiosity, and a very unconditional kind of curiosity, where it’s like, “Let’s just immerse ourselves into this world that we have no idea about.” And hopefully a plot, a certain theme or certain characters will evolve and emerge from there. And now after The Disciple , which takes place in the Indian classical music scene, I want to work even more from sort of an inside-out manner, where it’s the themes, and it’s my concerns, and my worldview that comes first. But then again, there’s no one rule, right? It’s always going to be different for every story, for every film.

We often start with the physical place itself, and with stories about that place. Deepen that research. I’m really interested in how places are constructed beyond a parochial idea of local, like what kind of stories, and what kind of movements, and what kind of trajectories are tied to a particular place. Then, once we start looking at a story of place, it somehow very often becomes a story about migration.

It’s a funny contradiction because when we started playing instruments as kids, the thing we didn’t want to do was jam. We wanted to have an idea. We wanted structure. Jamming was like this way of sharing the spotlight, where everyone got their own solo, every individual got their own moment to shine. When we were growing up, that’s how we thought of it. Eventually we embraced this more freeform approach. I wouldn’t call it jamming, but maybe it’s more about exploring.

I typically will look and see if I have enough songs that I’ve written over a course of however long. For Wisecrack, it was a very conceptual album to me, so I had such a vision and when I met Dave Vertesi who produced it, he just understood it. And so it was really easy. I didn’t have to look anywhere else for producers, he was just kind of like, “Okay, this is what we’re doing and this is what I want it to be, and you get it.” And so it’s super easy and really painless.

But my own mottos are, “Don’t imagine for a moment that you’re going to be able to express yourself.” ... And most aspiring artists think, “I have something to say.”

Anyway, what’s the point of a plot, you know? Has life got a plot? Not that I know of. So why should a novel have a plot? But it has to have some kind of story. It has to have some kind of structure.

I keep office hours. I work from 9:30 to 6:00. It’s curious. In the morning, I could just about tie my shoelaces before noon, but I can write. It’s obviously a different part of my brain that’s working.