"I haven't got round to changing the battery in my alarm clock, so I get my assistant to give me a wake-up call about 10am instead. I'll then go downstairs, put on some coffee — always organic, always decaffeinated — and feed Helix, my dog. He's a black-and-white terrier and I've had him for 13 years. I took him in after a friend found him at the side of a road — he'd been hit by a car and left for dead. I named him after the chromosome structure that makes up DNA.

It's still pretty hot here in Georgia in September, so I'll put on sunscreen and take my coffee into the garden. I've got loads of blackberry bushes, so this time of the year I like to just sit beside them and pick away at the fruit. The garden's also full of scented flowers — I love them. My favourite's the tuberose, but I have to grow that on the roof terrace otherwise the grasshoppers get at it. I also have persian jasmine, echinacea, lilies, lotus, honeysuckle and enormous gardenia bushes, which are intoxicating. They're my mother's favourite, so for my parents' wedding anniversary, every June, I pick a gardenia for each year they've been together. Last year I put the flowers into a small boat I'd made out of banana leaves and left it on their kitchen table.

Once I've finished my coffee I'll go back inside, do my daily constitutional and jump in the swimming pool. I'll then put on a T-shirt, shorts and my Havaiana flip-flops, turn the main phones on and check my e-mails. Next, I'll take Helix for a walk, pick up The New York Times and, if I'm still hungry, buy an egg muffin at my local bakery.

Georgia is home for me, so I'm probably at my most relaxed here, but I do a lot of travelling and I'm often in New York, where I have an apartment. As a result, it feels like I'm constantly packing a bag. In fact, I've got years and years of bags lying around the house that I simply haven't unpacked yet. So the place is a bit of a mess. My sister actually bought me one of those books that tell you how to clean your home. The idea that you need a book to tell you is ridiculous, but she was obviously serious, because she marked all these pages and said: "These are the ones that apply to you." But the house is also full of things I've collected.

I still love painting and photography, which I studied at Georgia University, so I've got works by some of my favourite people, like Wolfgang Tillmans and Jacques Henri Lartigue. When I've got time, I still like to take my own photos.

To be honest, though, I don't spend a lot of money on anything except eating out, and friends and family. I have an army of goddaughters across the world, as well as nieces and nephews, so there's always someone to think about.

I have an older and a younger sister and we're pretty close. We're actually from a family of ministers, but my father kicked the traces and so did I. He joined the armed forces and I joined a rock band. We're both renegades in that sense. But I guess we knew what we wanted to do and we did it.

Lunch is usually a sandwich with avocado and swiss cheese, probably gruy�re, and a caesar salad. I'll have more coffee and a roll-up — I smoke Bali Shag, maybe three to five a day. I suppose if you're lucky in life you find a career or a hobby that means a lot to you, and by making music for a living, I've been incredibly fortunate. It's got me through life. It's been everything from an epiphany to my salvation.

Being part of REM, we're also lucky in as much as we've always been in control of things: we haven't allowed anyone to manipulate us or make decisions for us. Mike and Peter write all the music, while I concentrate on the melodies, lyrics and vocals. I still like to keep things pretty simple, though, so I use a Walkman to record ideas on, and then if they're any good, I transfer them onto my computer. It means that even when I'm moving about, I can be working on something.

It was like back in May, I was looking out of an airplane window, waiting to leave New York, and I got the idea for Leaving New York, the first single on our new album, Around the Sun. It's a love song to the city. It's also a love song and it literally flew out of me. But I don't like to talk about my lyrics — I often feel I give away too much. Once it's out there, it's for everyone to interpret in a way that means something to them and whatever they're going through.

Food is the centre of my evening, but I'm not a very good cook. If I were concocting something, I'd probably get out my beautiful rice cooker and do rice with gado-gado sauce and oven-baked onions. But I eat out most of the time. It's a chance to be with friends — I'm totally social in that sense. If I'm staying in New York, one of my favourite places is Otto's, a pizzeria run by my friend Mario in downtown Manhattan. Everything there is so fresh. He flies the mozzarella in from Italy himself, so even something as simple as his margherita is divine. Afterwards, a few of us might head on to a club, like Passer-By, or go to a private screening of a friend's new film. I've got a couple of film-production companies myself, so I'm always on the lookout.

It might be three or four by the time I get in. Before bed, I brush my teeth, take out my contact lenses and make sure the doors are locked. In my New York flat I pull the curtains on the north side, because I don't like the neighbours looking in on me as I sleep. I have
an organic mattress — admittedly I paid a fair bit of money for it, but it's comfortable and good for my back. And with that, I'm usually out like a light."