I'm definitely inspired by Michael Jackson. I watch all his videos all the time. And Busta Rhymes, early Busta Rhymes - I really was inspired by him. He's really the reason why I started rapping. Because all his visuals. I loved his videos when I was younger.
I'm vitally interested in cyber crime and in preparing law enforcement for a time when crime is international in its origins and its consequences.
I vividly remember D'Angelo's 'How Does it Feel?' as a song I listened to around the time I came out.
When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It's like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.
To be fair, I did come out of nowhere. 'Ghost' was the first song I ever did in a studio, my first time ever cutting a professional vocal.
In any event, I'm proud to wear the badge of jazz vocalist if that's what people want to call me; but at the same time, there are many other things I like to do.
I like to sing because my mother was a singer. She sang to me all the time, so I learned to love singing. I did have a career as little 10-year-old George Benson. I made my first record as a vocalist, but I've been playing guitar since I was 9.
I usually prepare a track and then I work with the artist when it's time to do the vocals.
I took some voice lessons here and there as a teenager but nothing too serious. I started taking it more seriously when I was in Miss Saigon. I needed to improve my technique in order to survive doing that show as many time a week as I was doing it. It's not an easy show to sing, so I needed all the help I could get.
I could have hidden in Boston and lived at home for three years, gone through my transition, taken voice lessons to make my voice more feminine, gotten gender reassignment surgery, and spent time to complete my transition, but I didn't want to wait. I wanted to be in the world.
From the time I made my announcement that I was going to be an actor, I auditioned for community theater, did shows at Greenbrier, interned at the Cleveland Play House for a summer, took voice lessons, took ballet lessons. I did everything that Cleveland allowed me to do - everything that was available to me.
Doing voice-over work is something that I love to do, and it is a lot of fun at the same time.
In truth, I've never been a big superhero fan. I don't mind some of the movies, and a couple of the cartoons were alright - that Batman series from the early nineties where Mark Hamill voiced the Joker is sweetness. But largely, I've not really had much time for superheroes.
At one time there were voiceover artists, now there are celebrity voiceover artists. It's unfortunate because these people need the money less than the voiceover artist.
There will be no funeral! Before I get too old and ill, I'll go to South America and live among the Pemon people and meditate. When the time is right, they can throw my body into the volcano.
I just gotta keep reminding myself: Every time I do an interview or something, my volition really has to be just to serve, to help people. Not to feel like I'm important.
When we watch a play under the standard circumstances, we've lost volition and time is passing. A still play feels like an existential threat.
There was a period in my life where most of my musical career was spent in a band that was very aggressive, and there was sort of a wall of volume all the time.
I wrote a screenplay for 'The Witches,' which Alfonso Cuaron was producing, but we couldn't get it made! The studio just wouldn't greenlight that movie. It's my favorite Roald Dahl book, 'The Witches,' because I grew up with my grandmother a lot of the time, and the relationship between the boy and the grandmother speaks volumes to me.
I sometimes look at my bookshelves today and wonder which volumes my sons will treasure in twenty or thirty years. Which should I be saving for them? Which will fade with time?
