The joy of songwriting only gets messed up if you are trying to follow up a big success, or you are trying to create a hit single, or if you have conscious thoughts of a particular outcome for the music.
What was most important to me at the Olympics was going out there and performing my best. When I messed up the first jump combination, which was my big move, it hit me that I messed up the program of my life.
One thing that I've always tried to do is create lifts - the moment that you have a rush of feelings. That's always something that I'm trying to communicate in music, and particularly the style of music that I write for Japanese Breakfast: I'm always trying to build things up into each other.
The stress that we [with Abilities] always feel is trying to continue advancing with our music. That's our plight, it's ingrained in our personalities. We feel like we're trying to race the world of music itself - just trying to create the best music, and as soon as we get done with one piece we're trying to figure out how to top it.
That messed me up, growing up in the public eye when I was a teenager. That's when everyone is trying to find themselves.
There is no good leader. First of all, if you think you are a leader, you are just messed up in your head. People should think you are a leader. If you think you are a big success, again, you are messed up. Other people should think you are a success.
I love watching people be totally committed in a very real way to stupid situations. I find it's not so much trying to be funny, it's trying to be real in a messed up context. That's comedy to me.
Coming up, a lot of people I looked up to had a signature sound, but I came up, and I was always in search of one, trying to find it, trying to create one. I was never really able to have a creative signature sound, you know?
Success isn't about reaching your goals; it's about striving for things, like the joy of trying to raise a family, trying to be a successful singer, trying to write good songs, trying to be a better person. It's that old thing about life being about the journey, not the destination.
When I was coming up, we weren't trying to get a hit or get paid, we were just trying to do our thing. The only thing we were really trying to do was to be recognized for our originality.
We think we need to create ourselves, always doing a paste-up job on our personalities. That is because we're trying to be special rather than real. We're pathetically trying to conform with all the other people trying to do the same.
The measure of success was writing a song, recording it and for it being in the hit parade in England. Success was about the postman walking up the garden whistling my song. I wasn't trying to conquer the world.
If you look at reggae and dancehall artists in general, there isn't really a big success story. A Shabba Ranks or a Yellowman might have a hit, but there's never a follow up. There's no consistency.
Line up your thoughts up for potential, take action and success will follow.
I was trying to uphold what I thought feminism was as best I could by supporting women, by trying to create an opportunity to get women to get together, play music together and celebrate the fact that we are having great success making music on our own and together.
I want to let you in on a little secret: I don't always feel like I'm a success. That's right. There are plenty of times when I feel like I've just totally messed up and failed to connect with the people I'm trying to communicate with.
The batsman does not always need to create big hits. He can hit a boundary, then pick up some singles and still gets nine runs. To avoid that, I need to plan in a way where he must look to hit wherever there is a fielder. That is what is called 'bowling to the field.'