As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
I spent my childhood clad in 1970s hand-me-downs, primarily from male cousins, which mainly consisted of a selection of beige, brown and orange dungarees. That, combined with a perfectly round pudding-bowl haircut, made me look, on a good day, like a cross between Ann Widdecombe, one of the Flower Pot Men, and a monk.
When I'm good at something, I always try to be the best at it and claim that throne. Even in school, I never let anyone say anything to me; I would always be the smartest.
I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.
There is a one woman in China that claimed she paid $50 to get my e-mail address. It was pretty shocking. I got one this morning from Scotland. A girl's requesting a signed photo of me.
I spent two summers working at Camp Curry and at Yosemite Lodge as a waiter. It gave me a chance to really be there every day - to hike up to Vernal Falls or Nevada Falls. It just took me really deep into it. Yosemite claimed me.
Other bands in Vegas hated us because we hadn't played shows and paid our dues. Publications called us out, saying we were just a put-together band, claiming we had ghostwriters. It made me so happy, the fact that everyone was hating on us so hard.
If I could chat with anyone, it would be Claire Messud, because I think she could tell me how to get better as a writer as I age.
As a child growing up in refugee camps, life taught me that many things were impossible. My older sister, Claire, taught me otherwise when her strength and resilience made the impossible possible in the way she worked, behaved, and took control of our lives.
When she was running for election in 2006, I went to Missouri to campaign for Senator Claire McCaskill. She impressed the hell out of me and I fell in love with her mother Betty Anne who is a pistol!
No one ever saw all of him. It took me nearly four decades to allow my father his shadows, his reserve, to sit silently with him and not clamor for something more.
My mother and my father have always supported me. Now in their eighties, they actually clamor onto the tour bus with me once or twice a year so they can watch the performances and hear the crowds. Traveling with eighty-something-year-olds on a tour bus... there has to be some sort of reality show in that.
To me, Wu-Tang is beyond Wu-Tang Clan... It's just like, hip-hop is beyond Grandmaster Flash, but Grandmaster Flash was one of the first guys to hit those turntables like that. The same thing with Wu-Tang. You'll see the difference in hip-hop from the moment we came in to before we came in. We changed it. We changed the whole structure.
I assume the closest members of my family don't actually want to kill me, but the truth is that I have shamed and hurt them; they have to deal with the outrage that my public statements cause, and undoubtedly some members of my clan do want to kill me for that.
I don't know what singers feel like when they make a song and people clap along and love it, but when people walk up to me and say the food was outstanding, that's what it is all about. I cook because I like to make people happy.
Playing on the streets of Iraq, or in Israel or the Gaza strip, I'd sing angry protest songs against war. People would say, 'Make us clap, make us dance, and laugh and sing.' It really made me think about the importance of happy music.
I can go into restaurants and a whole table will get up and clap if they recognize me, because they love Fox News. Other places - or even the same place - people will turn the other way.
People in the Hall of Fame tend to clap their hands and say, 'OK, I've done it all,' but for me, it was a new beginning.
Children are the most wonderful audiences. What's struck me most is that that they watch it so silently, until the end when they shriek and shout and clap.
It takes two hands to clap! I cannot be solely blamed for what happened in my relationships! If things soured, it happened because of both parties. Not just me!
