EC: What's the name of the band?
JF: Ataxia.

EC: Can you dispel the myth of the self-destructive artist/musician for us, please. Do you think the music business tends to attract more than its fair share of people prone to excess than other businesses? Put another way, which comes first, creativity or madness?
JF: I think you get people taking things to excess in all fields, doctors, lawyers---it happens to all kinds of people. In music you have people exposing this very vulnerable part of themselves, and you also have the lifestyle is so fast that oftentimes people search for whatever the easiest way to feel relaxed in the midst of all of it, or the easiest way to have energy. And so you end up taking drugs to sort of balance yourself out. But I think I know just as many creative people who've never taken drugs in their life as I do who have taken a lot of drugs. I don't really think it means one thing or another.

EC: Let's talk about your sobriety. Is there anything you'd like to share about this lifestyle change?

JF: No. (laughs)

EC: Ok. Fair enough. There's an old saying "Experience is the only teacher." What has your experience taught you, John?
JF: Are you talking about drugs specifically?

EC: Well, no not specifically. Experience is the only teachers. Some of us learned some hard lessons with drugs out there.
JF: The main thing experience has taught me is that one has to sort of hone their relationship to time, you know. Because time has a way of running off and not taking you with it. And for me the only way to live life is to grab the bull by the horns and call up recording studios and set dates to go in recording studios. To try and accomplish something.
To do the various things in life I want to do. For me, that's the fruit of what I've learned. I'm going through a phase where I'm really accomplishing a lot of things and in that is everything I've learned. There were years where I didn't do anything and at the time I felt that's what I needed to do. But had I had a well- balanced relationship with time in my youth, I wouldn't have to have gone through that. For me it's important to be in balance. To not let fear get in the way of things, to not worry so much about protecting yourself all the time.
Things like this can be your worst enemy. Something like trying to protect yourself all the time, things like trying to outwit fate. Those things can be the worst thing you can do for yourself. I find that the best way to do things is to constantly move forward and to never doubt anything and keep moving forward , if you make a mistake say you made a mistake. You say "That's my mistake, that's me, that's what I am, I made that mistake."
You can't make a mistake and look back & say oh god why did that happen I wish I could change that. Making mistakes doesn't slow you down at all, making mistakes is part of living and you can look back & learn from them. That's something that took a while for me to learn that,but once I did learn that my life start speeding up rapidly & at this point it feels like everything's going so fast that I can't imagine looking back for a second.

EC: Yeah, we're perfectly imperfect & it seems like you've done a lot of growing and you're grounded & you know exactly what you're doing. I've heard it said that "Life is a beautiful mess." Would you agree?
JF: Yeah, if you want to look at it that way. For me I think everything is very much perfect. There was a time when I looked at everything & I thought it was a mess & I didn't think it was so beautiful, but now I think it's very beautiful & very orderly. To me there's a perfect balance of things like pleasure & pain, & sadness & happiness. Everything's very perfectly balanced; for all the horrible things in the world there's lots of good things. I don't see how people can expect that there should be more good things or more happiness, for the people who want sadness there's sadness, for the people who want happiness, there's happiness. There seems to be a sense to everything. But when I thought everything was a chaotic mess, everything seemed really ugly to me as well, but I'm glad that I don't see it that way anymore.

EC: I've also heard it said "Life is the journey to the self." This is sort of the biggest question, what is the function of life? Have you studied Buddhism? You know, we're not here just to be happy; life is the journey to the self---and where are you in that? In the Buddhist sense that we all have God in us.
JF: There have been points in my life when I saw clearly that everything in the world & everything in the universe is all inside of me in really precise detail. The whole world is inside of everybody, and the whole universe is inside the whole world & things like that. I haven't really taken these sorts of things very seriously in the last two years because it's been so clear to me what I'm supposed to do. So I just wake up & do whatever those things are.