And it was only once we got into the Escalade and like, got the windows up and got going on the freeway that I even allowed myself to feel anything about what had happened. I mean, I never cry, you know? Like, I probably hadn’t cried in ten years. I didn’t even cry when Mandy and I split up. But now it was just like a fucking river. It was like a pipe had burst. It was like an anime movie or something. Just WAAHHHHHH. Like, those big animated tears flying everywhere like a sprinkler.

And Patrick, just like, without even making a big deal out of it or something just like, reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. He didn’t say anything or like, give me a talk or whatever. He just like, put his hand on my shoulder and held it there, kind of firm. And, I don’t know, I guess I just really needed that warmth, you know? I just really needed that human connection. I just curled up into Patrick’s chest and he held me and rocked me back and forth, and I just cried, like, ten years’ worth of tears into his enormous body.

Can I tell you a secret?

Everyone’s been waiting for my fourth album—like, there’s been all this speculation about what it’s gonna be and when it’s gonna drop and everyone’s wondering what I’m gonna do next—but here’s the thing:

It’s not an album.

LOL.

It’s a video game.

Nobody knows it yet—I mean, except for the people who are working on it—but the idea came to me about a year ago when I was thinking about what to do after Roses and Mud.

Basically, I was sort of like: Where do I go from here, you know? How do I top this?

And I sort of realized that like, at least for the time being, there were no more sounds I could create that were gonna top what I had just done. In order to move forward, I was gonna need to do something else, expand my conception of what I can do, and so I started thinking, like: How do I capture this feeling for people? How do I capture what it’s like to actually be there in the room at a moment of major creative inspiration?

And that turned into a larger question of like: How do I capture what it’s like to be me, you know? How can I share my life with people in the fullest possible way so that they can understand where I’m coming from and figure out what I’m all about?

And then it was like a lightbulb just went off in my head. I mean, seriously, it was like a movie or something. It was just like: YES. And I started figuring out who I knew in the gaming world and how I could get them to work with me.

Let me just say right off the bat, like: I’m not some total n00b to gaming. Like, video games have been a pretty central part of my life since—I mean definitely since I was a kid—but especially since I became famous. They’ve been really important, just in terms of my sanity.