I had been living in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, in New York City, for five years, and finally the city became too much for me.

As a certain kind of artist, you try to run out ahead of society and look back at it so you can get a better view of it and try to say something about it. But as everything started moving faster, it became harder to run out ahead, and I suddenly had to try to understand things from within.

This got to be too hard, so I quit the race, bought a car, packed up my place, and headed west. Since mid-September, I’ve been living in a small log cabin in the mountains of Oregon, at 3,500 feet, next to a 350-foot deep crater lake, which is spring-fed and very cold. I work all day, go for hikes and swims to clear my head, cook my meals and eat alone, and most days don’t see anyone.

Despite the natural setting, I think constantly about the online world.