It's always better not to know what the future holds.
That's what musician Tim Finn reckons, anyway.
The 74-year-old New Zealand musician is busier and more in demand than he's ever been, which shouldn't be a surprise.
He was, after all, the frontman for one of his country's biggest bands in the 1970s and 80s, Split Enz.
But if someone had told him, back when the band broke up in 1984, when he was 32, that one day in the distant future he'd still be playing those songs, he wouldn't have believed them.
"If they were to say at 74, and you're going to fill bigger rooms than you've ever played, and they're going to sell out, that would have sounded so strange to me," he said.
"It was '84 when we broke up. In those days, pop culture was still the same. You get 10 years. I think the Beatles only had 10 years, Split Enz had 12, and that was about the norm, and then you'd break up, and that'd be that. And there was something kind of great about that."
But the world has changed. Although Finn has had a varied solo career, Split Enz recently did a reunion tour which sold out everywhere, and the band will perform at the Singapore Grand Prix next month.
But first, Finn will perform in Canberra as part of the live music line-up at Floriade's NightFest, which includes The Temper Trap, Pacific Avenue, Busby Marou and Christine Anu.
And he couldn't be more excited at the prospect of playing among the flowers, and to all ages.
"A flower festival is very sensory and the town is bedecked," he said.
"I did one in Toowoomba. That's the only other one I've done, and it's such a good vibe, to have flowers out and blooming and it's spring, and here I come. I'm no spring chicken ..."
Finn has done plenty of other things since Split Enz, including collaborating with his fellow band member and brother Neil Finn and his own band Crowded House, another band that, despite performing a farewell concert outside the Sydney Opera House in 1996, has never really gone away.
And Split Enz songs have had their own afterlife, with several in the pantheon of greatest hits.
He said it had been a welcome joy to find that bands from long ago had an afterlife, even those from the 1970s and 80s.
"The three bands from that era that were sort of were all over the place in those days, all over the radio, playing big shows were ourselves, Midnight Oil and Cold Chisel. And we've all done it now," he said.
"We've all come out, had huge tours. It's really weird because pop music wasn't supposed to be about that - it was about the new, the new. So we've moved into a different generation now, where people are listening to songs that were written 40, 50 years ago, and it's hard to explain because I don't think it's nostalgia. There is some nostalgia in it, but it's more about the feeling in the room that it creates."
He's particularly inspired by the notion of today's teenagers coming across old songs - Crowded House's Don't Dream It's Over is a big one, alongside hits by the Smiths and Dolly Parton - and playing them alongside new music, even though he worries the music world might be too crowded.
But the fact remained that some songs, including many of his own, have a life of their own.
"The songs that we write in our bedrooms or in our living rooms, you know, little old upright pianos and things, when we're sort of just doing it really for ourselves and just falling in love with a certain chord progression or a melody, it's amazing that they expand out from there and reach hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people," he said.
"It's really extraordinary because when you do it, when you write it, you're not really thinking about that at all. You're just kind of inside the music, inside your mind, and just dreaming it up.
"But if something does work, it's really important to notice it and not copy it. I guess it fortifies you and inspires you."
