There are other things I like to do besides singing — I mean, if I had a month to do nothing but poetry, I would be deliriously happy. However, if I did that I would never pick up the guitar, and I have to sing and play intensively between concert tours or my fingers get soft and my voice gets freaky. About 22 years ago, when I realised that I was not immortal and that neither was my voice, I started going to a vocal coach. And I had to do a tremendous amount of work, because the way I had sung was officially incorrect. My vocal coach died last year, and I miss him terribly. But we taped all the lessons and now I’ve put them on my iPod, and this is the first time I’ve really listened acutely to everything he said.

I’ve been living here in the same house for 35 years. By my standards it’s luxurious, but by what people expect, looking at Hollywood stuff, it’s very rustic and small — people walk in and they’re stunned. But I love the place. My mother’s house is attached — so we both have a little privacy, but she’s right there and that’s how I prefer it: she’s 93. It’s a real gift to have my parents around at their age. My father’s 93 also, and he is in hospital now. He’s coming back and he’s going to be okay again, but he’s quite frail, in a wheelchair.

Once a week I go to stay with my son, Gabe [Gabriel Harris, from her former marriage to David Harris]. I have a beautiful grandchild now, Jasmine, and I love spending time with her.

Lunch could be anything from a cup of miso soup to a piece of freshly cooked salmon and salad — California nutsy-greensy food. I’m a terrible cook. I used to be a good cook, but it’s not like bicycle-riding: it doesn’t come back.

I’ve got a caretaker living on the property who’s hired to do a number of things including some cooking, so I beg and borrow as much of that as I can.

I rarely shop for clothes. There’s a wonderful guy in this country called the Reverend Billy, of the Church of Stop Shopping, and every time I talk to him on the phone or get an e-mail, it reminds me that I own enough: I don’t need to go out and buy new of what I already have.

I quit writing songs a number of years ago: I had writer’s block. The poetry
now comes out the way the songs used to come out. And now I’ve gone back very much to my roots musically. As it turns out, politically it is absolutely the right thing to do: rather than try to find new songs to deal with the state of the world, which unfortunately this country is leading in a disastrous direction, the songs from 40 years ago are coming back very comfortably. Dylan wrote With God on Our Side before Americans started fighting in Vietnam, and that’s pretty amazing when you think about it.

I think many people are pretty well stymied by the state of affairs here, and I think that this country, like any country that’s about to fall, says: “Oh, it couldn’t happen here.” And I think it’s happening. It’s getting deeper every day: wiretapping and people getting frightened for their jobs and their reputations, and all that stuff. My mom says that when I was 14 I was reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and I came out of my bedroom and announced that the same thing was going to happen to the US as what happened to the Third Reich. I’d forgotten that, and when she told me I thought: “Well, do I gloat because I was clever, or do I despair? Because it’s devastating news.”

People have said to me: “How do you keep up your optimism?” And I say: “I don’t — I never had any.” I mean, I know the human race too well. But there is still a kind of hope, which I usually see more in individual actions, in people who are courageous. I’ve been reading the book At Canaan’s Edge, about Martin Luther King, and whenever I read about King I get really inspired; it doubles whatever courage I have. I’m very vocal when I’m on tour, and I know that when people go to the concerts they get some kind of encouragement — to either restart or continue whatever they were doing that might battle the status quo.

My favourite dinner is a whole, crispy-cooked fish, and I love to eat with my hands. I won’t usually have wine: sometimes if I’m eating out I’ll think, “That would be nice,” and then I drink about half of it and forget it’s there.

It was mostly the trees that attracted me to this house. There’s a whole canopy of oak trees, and in one I have a little tree house, a little over 20ft up, made of ship’s ropes — the woman who made it for me is a ship’s captain. And on beautiful clear moonlit nights, and in the summertime, that’s where I sleep. It’s lovely.