To me, this degree was an acknowledgment of my work in music.
I had just started ninth grade when I got my acne. And I had braces. I wouldn't look people in the eye. It was not a good time for me - it just killed my self-esteem. I thought when I didn't look at someone, they couldn't see my face.
I have cystic acne, and sometimes when I have a breakout, it triggers me back to that time when I was a teen and I feel so self-conscious - like the whole world is looking at my bad skin. I've definitely not gone out of the house because of a breakout, which is horrible.
I used to have terrible acne on my face: red, splotchy discoloration. And mucus - I was constantly blowing my nose. Then one day, this woman sits down next to me on a bus, and says, 'You're lactose-intolerant.' It all cleared up in three days. That changed my life. Doctors couldn't figure it out.
While I am talking about private sector job creation, the cap-and-trade energy tax, Speaker Pelosi's health-care bill and card-check legislation, Washington Democrats are defending groups like ACORN. They are on the wrong side of the issues and know their views are wrong for Arkansas, so they attack me.
The real truth is that the Obama administration is professional at bullying, as we have witnessed with ACORN at work during the presidential campaign. It seems to me they are sending down their bullies to create fist fights among average American citizens who don't want a government-run health care plan forced upon them.
Sting I've seen a few times, and he really inspired me in the sense that he breaks the songs down a lot and will take a different approach. He'll take an acoustic approach to them; he'll rearrange them for the live stage.
I have pictures of me sitting in the racquetball court in my pajamas with an acoustic guitar, and Wolfgang is probably just two-and-a-half-feet tall. I'll never forget the day I saw his foot tapping along in beat! I knew then, I couldn't wait for the day I'd be able to make music with my son. I don't know what more I could ask for.
I tried when I was 13, when my grandparents gave me an acoustic guitar, and I tried for a year. It hurt so much to play. I mean, the fingertips hurt so much, I gave up.
Artie travels all the time. The rehearsals were just miserable. Artie and I fought all the time. He didn't want to do the show with my band; he just wanted me on acoustic guitar.
I really appreciate when someone can blow me away with live acoustic blues.
My parents got me a $25 Kent steel-string acoustic guitar when I was around 12. The following Christmas, my parents bought me a Conora electric guitar. It looked almost like a Gretsch. It cost $59, and my mom still has it.
After months of playing air guitar to 'Free Bird', what really got me into guitar was watching a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and picking up the Woodstock soundtrack. Listening to his version of 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Purple Haze.' My brother played acoustic guitar and, idolising him, I thought, 'I'm going to get a guitar.'
There's something about approaching universal truths with the simplicity of the acoustic guitar. You can take it anywhere, and it helps me reach listeners of all ages and walks of life.
I got a toy guitar at a fundraiser and was trying to write songs with it that were ridiculous. After a week, my parents bought me a real acoustic guitar, and I started taking guitar lessons.
Itβs like an electroacoustic, surround-sound cello gamba. It embodies everything that fascinates me the most - acoustics, playing instruments, digital processing, movement of sound. Somehow, everything is combined in Γmar.
With electronic music, you are not confined to the acoustics of a concert-hall, and that inspired me to bring my performances outdoors.
O thou Sun, send me as far over the earth as is my pleasure and thine, and may I make the acquaintance of good men, but never hear anything of bad ones, nor they of me.
When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.
Almost all my middle-aged and elderly acquaintances, including me, feel about 25, unless we haven't had our coffee, in which case we feel 107.
