In Washington, I found myself as a 31-year-old in a room with the president, vice president, and secretaries of state and defense, and I was unfazed by it. But get me around a rock star I grew up with and I have trouble completing sentences.
I hated seeing myself on screen. I was full of complexes. I hated my face for a very, very long time.
I believe myself to be the type of person who does not complicate his life. I have always lived my life without dramatizing things, whether the good things that have happened to me or the bad. I simply live those moments.
When things are too easy I lose interest in them so I find ways to complicate them to get myself interested.
The main relationship in the whole series was the one between the camera and Fleabag. I had to convince myself that whoever was watching on the other side of the camera was instantly complicit with Fleabag and instantly a friend of hers.
Since I'm in the entertainment business, I think I have to hold a mirror up to myself and say, 'Am I complicit in miseducating and misinforming our youth by participating in this business, or can I use this business to re-educate and uplift?'
The biggest mistake people make about me is that they see me as some sort of god-like figure with a big ego. If I see a button, a T-shirt, that says, 'Yngwie is God,' I just look at it as a complimentary way of people telling me they like me. Although it's very flattering, it doesn't change the way I look at myself.
I've been defending myself since I left Minnesota. Because I didn't comply to what they wanted, then it was like, 'Oh, I'm selfish. I'm this. I'm that.' I'm like, 'How can that be? You were just about to give me $71 million! Who gives someone $71 million, and they're selfish, and they're jealous of Kevin Garnett and all of this stupid stuff?'
At a shoot, I'm really aware of everything. When they do makeup, sometimes I can't see what they're doing, but I can feel it. I know what I look like, even when I can't see what they've done. I know how to compose myself.
I never force myself to be devout except when I feel so inspired, and never compose hymns of prayers unless I feel within me real and true devotion.
I follow a simple formula when I compose. I ask myself, 'What would the audience want to hear?' and 'Why would they buy my CDs?' And the process of answering these questions through music follows. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it backfires.
As a musician myself, I wouldn't be confident if I received some other composers' song, because I choose to express myself through the music that I make.
I believe you make your day. You make your life. So much of it is all perception, and this is the form that I built for myself. I have to accept it and work within those compounds, and it's up to me.
At least through most of the 1960s, I basically lived in a man's world, hardly speaking to a woman all day except to the secretaries. But I was almost totally unaware of myself as an oddity and had no comprehension of the difficulties faced by working women in our organization and elsewhere.
Or the other process that is important is that I compress longer sections of composed music, either found or made by myself, to such an extent that the rhythm becomes a timbre, and formal subdivisions become rhythm.
It's not that I have compromised or anything, but it's always been important to me to take good care of myself and be a good example. I'm not much a role model in terms of hair care, though.
'American Graffiti' was unpleasant because of the fact that there was no money, no time, and I was compromising myself to death.
I'm condemned by some inner compulsion to think about the daily rituals of my life. I have a low grade fever for improving myself in many ways, including everyday tasks.
I'm a compulsive note-taker, and I used to feel self-conscious about pulling out my little notebook and taking notes during a casual conversation. Then I noticed that people really seemed to enjoy it; the fact that I was taking notes made their remarks seem particularly insightful or valuable. Now I don't hold myself back.
Lately I've been working to convince myself that everything is a computation.
