Music is almost like a therapy for me. It helps keep me centered and think straight. Before I discovered it, I was walking around, and it felt like there were 25 extra pounds of gravity on my shoulders. It's like you're mute or something.
For so long, it was just my secret. It burned inside me, and I felt like I was carrying something important, something that made me who I was and made me different from everybody else. I took it with me everywhere, and there was never a moment when I wasn't aware of it. It was like I was totally awake, like I could feel every nerve ending in my body. Sometimes my skin would almost hurt from the force of it, that's how strong it was. Like my whole body was buzzing or something. I felt almost, I don't know, noble, like a medieval knight or something, carrying this secret love around with me.
I like to relax a lot the night before a race. I like having people around me. I don't like being on my own, particularly. Music helps psych you up, too.
I like to keep people around me like the guys I have on the road with me, three of them were childhood friends of mine when I was growing up in Scotland. They don't look at me any different than when we were in primary school. So it's good to keep people like that around you. I think if you surround yourself with good honest people, they will tell you what to hear when you need to hear it.
I got into music around the age of eight years old, and I think the reason why was because I discovered the Spice Girls. I fell in love with them, and it was the first time I ever felt like the music was just directed to me.
On my first trip to India, my guru took me to an ashram in Allahabad. I felt like I was walking into a place I had been before. It felt like it was my spiritual home.
I was, like, talking to these kids, and I look up, and there was, like, 25 cameras around me. And I ran. I ran away. I, like, straight up ran away, and I was so scared, and then, like, it happened, and after I was done, it kinda sunk in.
There are not many athletes who are out. And I think it's something that's important. It felt important to me. I guess it seems like a weight off my shoulders, because I've been playing a lot better than I've ever played before. I think I'm just enjoying myself, and I'm happy.
People would always ask me how I came up with my music and what it felt like to make music, and I would always see colours, and then I found out that that was synaesthesia. It helps me understand songs and what I like.
I never felt like I left, I think before anything I am a writer and that's something that I do almost everyday. So it wasnt I guess public,but I still would put out stuff on like MySpace or you know whatever social networks were poppin' at the time.
A lot of musicians have said things to me like, "Music saved my life". And "I'm standing on the shoulders of dozens of people that you've never heard of that were like angels for me that came out of the woodwork." And that's really the case for me. I had so many people that did those kinds of things for me.
As a featherweight I was walking around at 155 pounds and would just have to cut those 10 extra pounds. I wasn't being very professional.
I kept thinking there were two kinds of adults: There were...miserable creatures who scoured the earth in search of something to hurt. And then there were people like my parents, who walked around zombically, doing whatever they had to do to keep walking around.
Something in my gut twisted so hard that it felt like I was being tickled by an invisible hand, and it took me a moment to realize what it was. Hope. It had been so long since I'd felt it that the sensation was like something living inside me, something wonderful waiting to break free, just like I was.
My voice went recently, never happened before, off like a tap. I had to sit in silence for nine days, chalkboard around my neck. Like an old-school mime. Like a kid in the naughty corner. Like a Victorian mute.
I like fighting at the higher weight. That extra seven pounds helps because of energy, strength and I can focus more throughout the training camp, without having to put extra time into making weight.
I have a spiritual practice which helps to keep me grounded and centered. Yoga is vital because it keeps me in full awareness and connection with my breath. I keep a gratitude log, which helps to remind me of all the blessings I experience daily.