For me the march was a labor - a labor of love - but I was busy handing out flyers for the National Association of Black Social Workers, so I really wasn't standing in the crowd listening and observing. I was busy.
When you're training every day, recovery is so important. I find that foam rolling helps me to make sure I don't get tight anywhere so that I keep mobilised and keep on top of things.
For the best part of my childhood I visited the local library three or four times a week, hunching in the stacks on a foam rubber stool and devouring children's fiction, classics, salacious thrillers, horror and sci-fi, books about cinema and origami and natural history, to the point where my parents encouraged me to read a little less.
I will be the focal point for however long I decide to play. Half of me likes that idea and half of me doesn't, but once the adrenaline kicks in, I'll probably really enjoy it.
To make the hips the focal point of a pair of trousers is, to me, a fashion mistake.
With Dream Theater live, I may have been a bit of a focal point because I absolutely live for the energy on stage, and having interaction with the audience is absolutely crucial to me - regardless of how some others have described it!
I meditate and pray before going onstage - it helps me focus.
I don't have any focus groups on talent and programming. If I need five people in a mall to be paid $40 to tell me how to do my job, I shouldn't do my job.
For me, there's a subtlety in focusing on the right shape of T-shirt and pant. I recognise that it's boring, but the idea is to catch people off-guard and reward them in some valuable way.
My unpredictability is what separates me. If you move in so many ways, your opponent is not focused on what he's doing. He's focusing in on what you're doing, and it freezes him. When they freeze and you hit, they shatter like glass.
I don't read the magazines that make things up about people. I know what the truth is. I don't sort of indulge in my own fodder. I don't really care what they write about me.
I grew up on the rough side of the tracks. If you looked like you were soft, you would be fodder for the wolves. I came up in my neighbourhood like, 'I'm just gonna be me,' and all the thugs just said, 'It's OK, he's special.' They knew I had the talent with the rhymes, so they kept me around.
I like the idea of dating, but I'm not dating anyone exclusively, particularly right now. It's hard to be in a relationship unless you're ready to go public with it. So it's a lot easier for me to not be in a relationship. I really don't want that part of my life to be tabloid fodder.
Anything that is profoundly energy-shifting - like having a child - is fodder for creative thought. So for me, I welcome it and look straight into it as something to learn from.
Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.
Virtual Self' was me trying to paint a picture of a very foggy, distorted memory that I had of electronic music on the internet.
I could explain a hundred fold more than I ever have of the glories of the kingdoms manifested to me in the vision, were I permitted, and were the people prepared to receive them.
People used to come knocking on my door saying, 'Your trouble is that you're a sex symbol who doesn't do enough sexy things.' I'd say to myself, 'You think that if you pressure me I'll fold.' But if I did it, all it would mean is that I sold out.
I don't think I would have been able to stick with it and been proud of who I am and be feminine out on the court. I think I would have folded to the peer pressure if I didn't have my mom to encourage me to be me and be proud of how tall I am.
I was signed by L.A. Reid on Arista Records when I was 16. He understood me and believed in me. Arista folded and I got put on RCA or whatever, then there were new people there, and every six months it changes and more new people come in.
