I feel like, when I play characters, I create a space in myself that feels like the character and that doesn't go away. Somehow, you carry that with you. You let it go, but a little piece of it remains.
They shaved a little piece of bone off my small toe. You see, you balance yourself a certain way and this toe had grown under the other ones. So he cut it loose, where I could balance myself and it makes me walk straight.
I played this character twice in live action, and now I've become an animated character. It was actually fun to see myself drawn - I've never been a drawn character before.
I think I'm better at live shows than I used to be because I'm way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs. Now, rather than trying to talk or do a costume change, I'll use those moments for myself. I listen to what other people are playing, or just rest, or dance, even though I don't know how to.
One reason I do the live shows - and the monthly speeches at public radio stations - is to remind myself that people hear the show, that it has an audience, that it exists in the world. It's so easy to forget that.
I played at being someone else in movies and live theater, and at being myself in life's most intense, fascinating game - the game of love.
I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.
I started off doing live TV, so I kind of learnt that if I get myself into trouble, I get myself out of it.
It took living alone for me to really get to know myself.
You know, people think I named myself Meat Loaf, even though I didn't. And they think anyone who would name himself Meat Loaf couldn't have an IQ higher than four.
KWMR is my radio station, and I intend to have a job there as I get older. That's what I'm lobbying for. They don't need me. They've got plenty of people. But let's see if I can make myself indispensable.
I am hoping that by breaking barriers myself, I can inspire a whole new generation of people to think 'you know what, maybe I can, not just run a country, maybe I could start a company, maybe I could do something in my own local community to make a positive change.'
When I'm home on a break, I lock myself in my room and play guitar. After two or three hours, I start getting into this total meditation. It's a feeling few people experience, and that's usually when I come up with weird stuff. It just flows. I can't force myself. I don't sit down and say I've got to practice.
Locke' was sort of myself trying to find out if you could give yourself the maximum number of obstacles to make enough drama and seeing if you could do it.
I don't have a preferred religion - I'd have to do research. I was born a Christian, but as I've grown into my own man, I don't attach myself to a religion - 100 per cent, I have faith. Then it's locking into what suits me.
I was depressed as a child. I found it hard to make friends. My favourite thing was locking myself in the bathroom and practising comedy routines.
I've never been in a Sweat Lodge. I, myself, personally don't even like sitting in a sauna, so I've never been to a spiritual retreat so I don't understand the whole process.
Going from sharing a one-bedroom place to living in a loft to two people living in a house to me having my own place by myself has kind of mirrored my career... small steps to bigger, to bigger, to now having a steady job.
I think of myself as an engineer, not as a visionary or 'big thinker.' I don't have any lofty goals.
I look back on my liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder - as another exercise in self-involvement - rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe.
