In America especially, if you're Chinese and you work at a restaurant, there's a certain connotation among the Chinese immigrant community: It's the first generation that opens restaurants as a way to survive. You open to support your family so your kids can become doctors and lawyers.
I'm always weary of connotations. I don't want people to listen to the music I make presently because they liked my previous work, or to dismiss it because they didn't. I'm guilty of this as well - having preconceptions about other artists - but it's stupid because all music exists on its own and should be listened to with a clear head.
I get work done in half the time if the family is still asleep. When my family wakes up, I've already had a productive morning and am ready to enjoy breakfast with them before I start conquering the rest of my day.
I grew up understanding the pros and cons of what you're getting into and knowing what comes with your job. I like to keep my private life private, and then work is work. I feel so far I've had a really good balance with that.
I think live-in relationship works for a few people, and it doesn't for others. I have never done it, so I can't speak about the pros and cons. I don't know if that will work for me or not, but I am definitely not close to the idea. For an arrangement like that to succeed, one needs to have the right feeling for the right person.
And I do think that earlier in my career, I did make a very conscious decision to make sure that I was doing work that wasn't necessarily given to me, and that people didn't necessarily think that I would be able to do.
My conscious decision has always been to do work that's meaningful and play characters that give something to the film.
Right after 'Backspacer,' my best friend got killed tragically. Something happened to me then where I got super motivated. I had a shelf of all this unfinished music... So I just went to work and made a conscious decision that I was going to finish a bunch of stuff. Life's short.
If we could get your subconscious mind to agree with your conscious mind about being happy, that's when your positive thoughts work.
The conscious mind can only pay attention to about four things at once. If you've got these nagging voices in your head telling you to remember to pick up the laundry and call so-and-so, they're competing in your brain for neural resources with the stuff you're actually trying to do, like getting your work done.
How does the subconscious mind work? Is it independent of the conscious mind? Is it programmed by experiences or instructions? Many questions come up, but the one answer is common: if you can access the subconscious, then you can reprogram it, period!
There's not some idea I'm going to create a work that's going to change everybody's consciousness.
I've been able to do pretty well. I don't work as many consecutive nights as I used to, but I'm still working over 100 nights a year, so that's good for me.
Ignorance of what real learning is, and a consequent suspicion of it; materialism, and a consequent intellectual laxity, both of these have done destructive work in the colleges.
I believe that who we are, and consequently the work that we make, whether we're visual artists or writers or journalists or filmmakers, is a projection of where we were born, what's been withheld or lavished upon us, our color, our sex, our class. And everything we do in life to some degree is a reflection of that context.
I don't do celebrity endorsements. My work with Conservation International is a good use of whatever celebrity I might have to draw attention to important problems. I have the same responsibility as everyone to reduce consumption and to teach children to respect the environment.
Steve Irwin did wonderful conservation work but I was uncomfortable about some of his stunts. Even if animals aren't aware that you are not treating them with respect, the viewers are.
We have to prove to the disinherited majority of the world that ecology and conservation will not work against their interest but will bring an improvement in their lives.
When I say that Latinos share conservative values, when Ronald Reagan said that, we mean the love of family, the love of country, a commitment to personal responsibility, to hard work.
I've been a Republican all my life because I embrace the conservative values of hard work, personal freedom, less government and fewer taxes. But I also believe in compassion, inclusion, and helping those who want to help themselves.
