Teenagers expressing this on a daily basis in the middle of the streets - you can't help but believe we are in the mind state of taking our losses and changing people's perceptions of us and our community. We are strong. Our families are tired of being hurt.
Perhaps the more "operatic" video pieces were a reaction to my knit sculpture, which kept me isolated for so long in the studio that the videos were a way for me to be social and flamboyant and to change my mind all the time. Because when I did the knit pieces, once I committed myself to a piece, I was locked into an idea, and the only thing that could really move was my mind. The early video pieces were a way for me to express what was going on in my mind.
I saw a video on YouTube of a girl who had very similar reactions to late-stage Lyme disease as I did. And I thought it was crazy. And when I saw her basically have a seizure on camera that looked very much like my seizure I felt, "Oh my god. That's me." And so it was really important to me, and I said to Sini, 'We have to find some way to not just talk about Lyme disease, but to show it.
With the fight scenes, they would take a video camera and shoot alongside the camera so we would piece it together on the computer and had an extremely rough cut of what we were doing.
They were angry, I thought. Horrified. These teenagers, with their hormones, making out beneath a video broadcasting the shattered voice of a former father.
I got up and saw my face in the mirror and saw the horror. When they did the surgery on me, they took out 67 glass pieces. There were a lot of movies that I had lined up for myself during that time, and I had to let it go. I didn't want people to know because, at that time, people were not that supportive.
Before the camera, you only had secondhand takes - someone had to tell you what they saw or draw a picture of it or sing a song. Because of the camera, sometimes to our horror, we now know everything that happens in the world - things that before we were sheltered from.
I had the benefit of parents who believed deeply in my ability. And they were teenagers when they had me - they were teenagers when they got married - but they instilled in me that you can do anything and that brains were most important, that passion was important, and drive.
The truth was, history repeated itself on a daily basis; mistakes were made over and over. People were haunted by what they had done, and by what they hadn't had time to do.
No one was jumping up and saying, 'Yeah, let me give you money.' I had never held a camera in my hand - a home video camera, nothing. I had not directed.
But once I saw them [Jackson 5 during audition], I rushed out with my video camera to start taping them because I knew that they were something so special, mainly because of the lead singer, nine-year-old Michael Jackson. And it was just so obvious to me that he was a star.
I've been acting since I was 2 and have always been on camera but doing a video is different because when you're acting, you pretend the camera's not there and you just do the scene and with a music video you're right in the camera so it feels weird sometimes.
When I first started, I would go to Weist-Barron, and I studied with Rita Litton and ACTeen. For teenagers, it's a really, really great school. We did a lot of on-camera stuff, so you see yourself and what you do on camera.
It's a very wise thing for people to rationally sit down and look at what the risks are not only on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a yearly basis, on a lifetime basis, and then plan one's life accordingly.
I think that if someone plays a video game, and then goes out and harms another human being, or themselves because of what they just saw in the video game, they were screwed up in the head long before they got their hands on a controller.
I just did in my early twenties what most did when they were teenagers, being free and exploring and making mistakes, but I did it in France. I did it privately.