One could almost define life as the organized disobedience of the law of gravity. One could show that the degree to which an organism disobeys this law is a measure of its degree of evolution.
Honestly, I had no idea that the heart could cause such trouble and strife. It could be broken and still mend. It could be wounded and still heal. It could be given away still returned, lost and found. It could do all that and still you lived, though according to some, only just.
I believed even then that if I could transform my experience into poetry I would give it the value and dignity it did not begin to possess on its own. I thought too that if I could write about it I could come to understand it; I believed that if I could understand my life—or at least the part my work played in it—I could embrace it with some degree of joy, an element conspicuously missing from my life.
I had no interest or intention of ever writing music. I was a professional violinist in my 20s. I was obsessed with conducting, and I was conducting as much as I could, and I was studying as much as I could. I went to USC; I got an undergrad degree in violin and a master's degree in conducting.
'Simon' was always a word-of-mouth book. When it came out in 2015, I don't know that anybody thought that 'Simon' could be mainstream. Publisher Harper Collins loved it in-house, but it wasn't a lead title. Nobody is more surprised than me that it's a film. It's the little book that could.
I was running the show on 'United States of Tara' and 'How To Make It In America' where I could say, 'Okay, I'm in charge of everything now.' But it still wasn't my show.
And I knew, nothing I could say or do
Could come close to thankin' you for your love
And I could try for the rest of my life
But that wouldn't be half enough
Three 6 Mafia have been around for a long time; we've made a lot of music. Anybody's music can influence anybody. I've heard people say that our music has influenced such and such, and it could be true, and it could not.
When I say dance music, it's anything that makes me want to dance. It could be Timbaland and Missy Elliott, but it could also be disco music and samba music: It's not relying on melody in the same way; it's more about rhythm.
A great script might come my way, and I could be in the middle of music. So, it's a huge choice that I have to make - if I'm going to go do a movie or if I'm going to turn it down - because it could be an opportunity that could send my career through the roof, and you never know.
Simon has always said we're a chat show pretending to be a music show.
I could only do music if I could do it the way I could do it. That's what be making me stop, I don't wanna do music in the box.
Sure, I could give advice; I could, say, travel the world, listen to music. But all I can really say is do something you want to do and do it well. And if you want to be a choreographer, then you have to make dances.
Some say it appears that painting has come to an end. I say the problem is that the painters' curiosity has come to an end, and this is more observable in the West and not in the East, since in the East there are plenty of untouched and unexplored spaces that could still inspire an artist as sources of creativity.
I had to feign interest in all this nonsense until I could ask when I could come over and sit on his face. I didn't say that out loud, of course. I never say the things I really want to. If I did, I'd have no friends.
I moved to Des Moines when I was 15. I asked my mother to give up costody and sign parental rights over to my grandmother, who I lived with while I went to school. I was clean and finally starting to figure myself out. I can only say that now without laughing. I was still very out of my own place, and I didn't even know what that place was. All I knew was that I could write music, that I had no idea what that could mean and that I was still surrounded by people I couldn't relate to. I hadn't found my tribe yet.