As an artist, you're very sensitive about your art. And you feel like, 'Am I doing the right thing? Am I making the right music?'
Everyone knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did we would do things differently. Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, "Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?
I just love architecture, and I just love the idea of being someone who sees the world differently and doing everything you can do in order to actualize that dream. And really sticking to your guns when everyone else is telling you that you're crazy.
I am so extremely busy with what I am doing myself. When I am not playing music, I am usually doing other things. Playing around with my Ferraris and playing tennis and things like that. What I understand, there is a new group of kids that are very serious about playing, which is great; I think that is a good thing.
When I speak now, my experience in art wells up so articulately that I am surprised even while I am talking. I move around a podium as easily as if it were my living room and although I am keyed up I am not anxious. I feel as if I were doing what I should be doing - the feeling I have when intent in my studio.
I am not really that big into fashion, where I am looking at trends or what everyone else is doing.
When I act, I feel like I am a color in someone else's painting - I can be the best blue that there is, but I'm still only part of their entire picture - but, with music, when I am performing with Reserved For Rondee, I am the painter, you know?
I spend most of my time in California. I feel I am fueled by rage and by the political climate there. I am angry most of the time when I am there, which might be unbearable for someone else, but for me it's fuel for my writing.
I am 33 years old, and what can I have been doing that I still am in a muddle? But everyone else is, too; maybe our muddles are concurrent.
I've always been just as interested in making people think as I am in making them feel, and one of the things this scientific process allows me to do is make the audience look differently at dance.
I am critical of myself like everyone else. You go to a movie theater and you are forty feet high. I had bad skin as a teenager and I am a shy person, but I think I am in the perfect business to fight my insecurities. You have to learn to love yourself and say 'I am pretty cool' instead of being so critical. You can easily fall into the trap of doing that.
If you experience that feeling of being in a rut in your life, then something's not right. A lot of people who feel that way don't take the time to say, 'O.K., well, what am I doing? Is that what I want to be doing? What is it making me feel this way?' You have to identify what specifically is making you feel stuck.
I am my father's son. My sticking to my guns and doing it my way, and standing firm - that's definitely from him. And the music side, I was so lucky to have a dad that was as cool as he was.
Am I R&B because I'm black? Am I pop because I have a song called 'Milkshake'? Or can I just be who the hell I am? Good Lord, people make it seem like we're doing heart transplants here, but we're just making music!
It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers.
Abortion. Feminism. Online harassment. Social justice. Women's "no"s are constantly doubted and eroded in our culture. Saying "no" and sticking to it? - ?and, especially, doing that where other women can see it? - ?is a political statement.