People ask me from time to time what it was like growing up with Henry Fonda as my father. I say, Ever see Fort Apache? He was like Colonel Thursday.
We used to play football on the levee, with no shirts on in the summer - August in New Orleans - and my skin would turn red. They'd call me Redskin, Red Apache, then it turned around to Apache Red.
More people are asking me to come and sing for them, so obviously I am getting more work. But apart from singing, I have been parallely programming and producing music tracks and assisting music directors. That is my bread and butter, which is how I survived in Mumbai. Now I can't leave it.
The Beatles exist apart from myself. I am not really Beatle George. Beatle George is like a suit or shirt that I once wore on occasion, and until the end of my life, people may see that shirt and mistake it for me.
I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.
It dawned on me then that you either had to survive apartheid, or you had to perish with it. And I decided to survive.
Yes, I learned history at school; I know everything about apartheid. My dad, he bought the books about it, stuff like that. But I just move on with my life. It's completely different for me.
I installed a skylight in my apartment... the people who live above me are furious!
It has to do - I think - with growing up in an apartment, with my aunt and my cousins right next door to me, with the door open, with neighbors walking in and out, with people yelling at each other all the time.
When I first started writing, it was me alone with a computer in my apartment. I hated the time away from other people, and my writing sucked. Now I have a laptop; I can do the most tedious part of my job in a public place.
I grew up wearing a uniform to school, and now I have my stylist come to my apartment and create outfits for me to wear. Otherwise, I'd never get dressed.
I was very depressed when I was 19... I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.
The only thing that relaxes me is archery. That's why I have to have apartments with gardens.
My dad's job was to manage apartment complexes, so when people would move out or when people would die or whatever, people left things in their apartments, he would always bring me home people's collection of music that they left behind. I was excited because I didn't really have money to go to the CD store all the time.
To me, I'm the epitome of what a ghetto child is: I was raised by a single parent; I stayed in apartments my whole life; I don't think I've ever cut the grass.
I've always been so apathetic. I figured, OK, maybe the world is going to fall down around me. Now I want to make a better world... that's motherhood.
I'm in no way suggesting that my opinion matters more than anyone else's, of course, but the only thing that bothers me is apathy. People that sit out of the process and complain about it, or pretend that politics isn't a part of their everyday lives.
It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.
Standing on the apex of our planet is humbling. I'm starved of oxygen, depleted of reserves, unable to eat, and bound by anxiety. This is a dangerous place. Yet the symbolism of standing on top of the world gives me a chance to experience time on a cosmic scale.
I think 'Comic Book: The Movie' is the apex of my career in terms of making a personal statement that has significance to me and resonates with biographical detail about not only my career, but all the people that I've worked with in my career. All of it's riddled, on- and off-camera, with people I've known and worked with for decades.
