In Europe, I do see a lot of women who were fans years ago bring their daughters and sons to shows and that's how my music gets passed down, and I love that.
I was at a meeting two years ago in Beijing, and I passed a bunch of women who were marching in a protest. Their signs were probably saying something I wouldn't have agreed with at all. But I was so glad to see women marching. And it's happening all over the world.
Rome is the capital of Europe; it's as simple as that. You need to see what the Romans did 2,000 years ago. They were so advanced compared to the rest of the world. They showed us how to make roads, toilet seats, how to do irrigation, and more. When you see the Colosseum you won't believe it was built so long ago.
There are now grandmothers and grandfathers coming to see us because they are of that age, they grew up in the '50s and '60s and they bring their sons and their daughters to hear the songs they heard when they were young.
Old women even forget how to love their sons. The heart gets worn out, Monsieur.
I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks.
We love all kinds of music: We love pop music, we love rock music, we love R & B and country, and we just pull from all our influences. So I don't really take offense as long as people are coming out to the shows and buying the records and becoming fans of the music. At the end of the day, the music is what's gonna speak to you.
Every time I come to Europe, I'm just as excited as I was my very first time, which was many, many years ago. I love that part of the world, and I especially love the fans.
I created my own little online series, 'Love, Life & Music,' years ago, before reality TV got poppin'. I wanted my fans to see that I wasn't just here sitting on my hands. I'm out here every day, grinding and working.
If it were customary to send daughters to school like sons, and if they were then taught the natural sciences, they would learn as thoroughly and understand the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as well as sons.
I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters - two beautiful, intelligent black young women - playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.
I'm really interested in, who's booked the guests, who's decided to have Lena Dunham and to have the mothers of sons who were shot - sons and daughters who were shot by the police and, you know, the other performers, Paul Simon and Alicia Keys.
Just as our forefathers saved and invested to build what we, the current generation, are enjoying today, so, too, we must plant trees so that our sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, can enjoy the shade.
If artists want to have people come to their shows and buy their merchandise, they really have to make a commitment to those fans and bring the best music, shows and interaction that they can. This is something that won't change with technology or economy.
I really don't see the point of making music if you don't love it, and I'm lucky enough to say I love my music, and love the things I've made over the last couple of years and they bring me so much joy.
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair that ever since in love's embraces met -- Adam, the goodliest man of men since born his sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve.
And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation.