Pa rt ic l e s i n t h e A i r
“Puma” is based on actual events. The song starts with something
that my wife said to me early on in our relationship. We were
walking across Central Park and she was going to get some test
results and they thought that something wasn’t quite right. She
turned to me and said, “I’m afraid they’re going to tell me that I’m
a girl and not a puma.” And I thought that was pretty awesome.
It really made me love her more. I was just imagining these
particles—you know when you can kind of see the actual molecules
and dust that are static in the air?—unbeknownst to us, lacerating
our bodies with subatomic particles. It’s about not wanting to be
human and vulnerable to those things.
J o h n B a l d e s sa r i
I love [the visual artist] John Baldessari, and [when I was working on
Are You Serious’s cover art] I kept referencing him to the designer ]