Singing alone, he says, is a bit naked, and I get embarrassed by it. I don't mind doing it for myself or the group or for Mary, but I don't know that I want to do it for other people. He takes a satchel with him everywhere, filled with notes and ideas about Life and Death and Feelings and general Big Stuff like that. I make lists of everything, he says, even lists of lists, so I can throw them away and not carry a lot of useless baggage around in my head. That's because it wasn't particularly traumatic, getting married.
Marriage is an institution that means nothing.
I'm not responsible enough to be a father, Robert shudders. Everyone looks at Mary's stomach and gives me knowing looks, whereas we have no intention of having children at all. We just got married to have a nice day, so that Mary could walk down an aisle in a white dress and just have all my aunties and uncles there. We waited until we knew it wouldn't make any difference to us before we got married, because we didn't want it to make us grow up. I find that having an audience of 10,000 people singing along with a song you've written , it's like there's something that goes beyond ego and beyond flattery, it's almost like other people affirming that you're there.