There's one little room in my house which is filled with all my clutter and bits and pieces. My sewing machine is up there, and all my knitting stuff. Its a place where I can go to relax and unwind. I don't get to spend a lot of time up there, but at least I know its there.
That arrogance of youth and that kind of ignorant confidence can get you through a whole lot of things, and then life does its stuff, and you get smashed around and beaten up. You get full of doubts, and you end up making a person out of those bits and pieces.
We spend a lot of time trying to keep all that stuff very private. In this day in age, it's impossible. It's out in the ether and people send stuff to my house all the time. People show up at my house sometimes.
I don't know how to relax. I get so edgy and instantly I'm ready to go. I don't like to waste any time. I try to use up every minute until I get tired, and then go home, rest for an hour, and then go. But I don't ever actually relax.
I don't spend a lot of my time in the locker room. That's my least favourite place in the world.
I used to go up to her house. She lived upstate [in New York] and I lived in Manhattan; you're living in a lot of noise and my career was being built. For me to spend time with Nina [Simone] is to spend a lot of quiet time.
When you have Enough, you have everything you need. There's nothing extra to weigh you down, distract, or distress you. Enough is a fearless place. A trusting place. An honest and self-observant place ... To let go of clutter, then, is not deprivation; it's lightening up and opening up space and time for something new and wonderful to happen.
I used to go to all the environmental conferences when I wasn't an invited speaker. I was just somebody in the back taking a lot of notes. It was when I was least visible that I came up with the most cool stuff. Now, because I don't get to be Clark Kent, I feel like my learning curve is slowing way down. I'm always afraid the conversation will move on and I'll be up at the front of the room saying last year's speech.
I have a sewing machine that I adore, and I spend a lot of time sitting in front of it when I'm not working. And any excuse to paint or draw or do something artistic with my hands really gets me going. Definitely aspiring.
Writing is like sewing together what I call these 'buttons,' these bits and pieces.
The greatest thing about my house was that I was in the far end of it and I could make as much noise as I wanted. By the time I moved out, I had a full-sized piano, two full-sized organs, bits and pieces of a drum kit, and a whole computer set up for Pro Tools. I had this mattress in between the piano and the organ. That was the only walking room.
When you've got four people to get dressed to get out the door you don't really spend a lot of time on yourself. But that's the way I roll anyway. I was never one to do my hair and make-up just to go to the market, so it's not that much different. If I get a little eye cream on, I feel I'm ahead of myself.
As an introvert, you have to spend a lot of time with me and then little bits of my personality will come out over time. But as an artist, sometimes you only get five minutes to impress someone, so it is kind of hard.
As always, I keep my head up, look objectively at all the matches I played, see where I can improve, bits and pieces, and, you know, get ready as quick as I can.
I spend a lot of time hanging out with kids in their early twenties who feel like they've messed up and have really screwed up in a lot of ways. We spend a lot of time talking to them and saying, 'You can change that.'
But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces - I'm not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it's a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say.
It's never really that much fun for me to do movies anyway, because you - you know, you have to get up very early in the morning and you have to go in and you spend a lot of time waiting around.