When I was younger, I was a rave kid trapped inside a singer/songwriter's body. But I kind of figured my way out because I started making these really terrible beats on this Yamaha keyboard that my parents got me for my 10th birthday.
I threw my son, Brandon, a rave for his birthday and I fully set it up like a crazy rave with lights and sound, me and my partner DJ'd - I got Mix Master Mike from the Beastie Boys to come DJ for a bit.
I observe a lot, and I try to pick out what looks good on me. I like to keep it basic and simple. Never too flashy. Remember, whatever suits you is the best, and it doesn't necessarily have to be the trend or the rave of the season.
Australians are crazy, man! Every night, I feel like I'm in a scene from Brad Pitt's 'World War Z'... the kids are going to figure out a way to from a zombie rave ladder over the plexiglass and come into the DJ booth and eat me alive... Not in a bad way at all.
I went to a music academy in Los Angeles, and some friends started playing me Ravel and Prokofiev, who I liked, but what really blew me away was 'The Rite of Spring.' That's what made me get interested in classical music for real and want to study it.
They welcomed me like I have been a Raven my whole life. It meant a lot to me. I knew what I could bring to the team, on and off the field.
I believed then - in a deep, easy way that is impossible for me as an adult - that there was more to this world than meets the eye. Trees had spirits; the wind spoke. If you followed a toad or a raven deep into the heart of the forest, they were sure to lead you to something magical.
People in Scunthorpe don't care what I say. And I'm not camp, either. I'm a geezer. I'm not a raving queer, I've got a bit of character. I just ignore people who shout at me in the street. I just stick my head in the air; I'm not interested.
I had an art teacher who's the reason I got there in high school who encouraged me to go to Alabama. That's where she had gone and kept raving over their art department.
If I were on the field, I'd want the manager sticking up for me. Sometimes players are dead wrong, ranting and raving, but you stick up for them. They appreciate that.
What's going to be hard for me is to try to divorce myself as much as possible from what I wrote. I'll have to approach it simply as raw material and try to craft a film script out of it.
I used to work in a clothes store, played cricket for money, did photo shoots. It was that period of struggle which gave me the experience to be an actor. The emotions have to come from the raw material of life.
My favorite thing as a performing artist is to get a pile of raw material from a writer who says, 'Will you help me make this real?' There's nothing like starting from scratch.
Everything is raw material to me. Land is raw material... I take one form and transform it into other forms.
Anybody who dedicates himself to exploring the human condition, there's always a detached eye that's watching. In any situation, a little part of me is observing it, to see if there are any raw materials to create something else later.
Ray Bradbury published his first story 29 years before I was born. He established himself as an international writer long before I arrived. When my mom was nine months pregnant with me, my father read Bradbury aloud to her as I listened intently, in utero. And I later became his biographer.
As a younger person, I was obsessed with Ray Bradbury, and I think his stories did more to shape me as a storyteller than anybody else - even though, when I read them now, a lot of them seem overly sentimental. But that's probably the writer that I've thought about the most, even though I don't necessarily like a lot of his work.
Ray Bradbury taught me the importance of metaphor and simile and poetic style.
Ray Bradbury was the first author that I was really exposed to back in grade school. I'm a big Philip K. Dick fan, but the emotion and humanity that Bradbury brings to his stories and the way he uses sci-fi to get at the human heart is something that's unique and for me incredibly influential.
The move to creating stories was a natural progression for me, but the most pivotal time was probably in 6th grade: That year, a friend introduced me to the stories of Ray Bradbury, and a student teacher introduced me to creative writing.
