I like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.
Armchair poverty tourism has been around as long as authors have written about class. As an author, I have struggled myself with the nuances of writing about poverty without reducing any community to a catalog of its difficulties.
Clothing started as an armor for me. It was one of the ways that I protected myself from the world. It evolved into a form of creative expression.
Armstrong described the lunar surface as 'beautiful.' I thought to myself, 'It's not really beautiful. It's magnificent that we're here, but what a desolate place we are visiting.'
If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me.
I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.
It helps me to learn things in different languages, even if it's just phonetically, and to make myself vulnerable to other audiences by trying to reflect back to them the genius of their own cultures, and to do that, oftentimes, in new jazz settings, new arrangements. It's a way to show respect.
With the Rhythm Kings, I can involve myself in arranging and producing the music as well as the choice of songs.
I feel myself becoming the fearless person I have dreamt of being. Have I arrived? No. But I'm constantly evolving and challenging myself to be unafraid to make mistakes.
When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.
I'm in trouble because I'm normal and slightly arrogant. A lot of people don't like themselves and I happen to be totally in love with myself.
Whenever I start feeling too arrogant about myself, I always take a trip to the U.S. The immigration guys kick the star out of my stardom.
I think of myself as an entertainment arsenal. Like I have my acting bazooka and my music machete. And you don't know what I'm going to come at you with.
If you look at the paintings that I love in art history, these are the paintings where great, powerful men are being celebrated on the big walls of museums throughout the world. What feels really strange is not to be able to see a reflection of myself in that world.
My introduction to art history was like everybody else's. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don't see a reflection of myself in any of these things I'm looking at.
My undergraduate degree was in art history! Raising money for Chipotle was really my MBA. The money for my first restaurant came from my dad, the second from mostly cash flow. The third was an SBA loan. After my dad invested $1.5 million to open a few more, he suggested I raise the money myself for the experience.
Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?
I was very weak in my childhood, and arthritis took a toll on me. But my parents did everything in their might to help me recover. Slowly, I started recovering from the illness, and I made a pact with myself that I would not let my past dwell on my future.
I'm not a natural writer like, let's say - I'm not talking about Arthur Miller; that's a whole other thing - but let's say Woody Allen. But the more I've written, the more I've found that there is a deep well in me somewhere that wants to express things that I'm not going to find unless I write them myself.
When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'
