A Quote by M. Shadows
Someone sent me an article on AI that was written by Tim Urban on the website Wait but Why - that was kind of where I stuck my toes in the puddle, and I said, 'OK, I've gotta learn about this!' I felt like this is one of those things that our generation is going to have to answer for, eventually, and I just wanted to educate myself on it.
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Our generation, and that of our children, will face its share of crises, just like every generation in the past. When those calls come, will you be ready? The answer depends on how we educate the next generation.
A lot of things that should not be written were written without checking with me, things that were not in good taste. That hurt me. That is why I stopped talking to the press. Because they didn't want to ask me. They just wanted to write what they felt like.
I thought of all the magazine article I'd read on mothers who worked and constantly felt guilty about leaving their children with someone else. I had trained myself to read pieces like that and silently say to myself, 'See how lucky you are?' But it had been gnawing at the inside, that part that didn't fit, that I never let myself even think about. After all, wasn't it a worse kind of guilt to be with your child and to know that you wanted to be anywhere but there?
For example, instead of being asked to write an article, suddenly editors wanted me to make super-short videos. The assumptions of those video gigs was that kids don't read as much news and basically need to be read to, which I found really problematic and kind of insulting. I thought, Isn't it just that you don't have any money and that's why you want me to make some crappy "content" for your website?
Big Fish was the first movie that we worked on together, and I had already written it. We had another director, but that director didn't do it. So, it was just a Hail Mary to Tim, and Tim said that he wanted to do it and I was like, "That's fantastic!" But, there wasn't a lot of collaboration because he knew what he wanted to do and just did it. There were very minor changes for Big Fish.
And one day, this thing happened to me: I coughed, and the blood just came gushing out of my mouth. ... I still can't believe that that happened to me, but I sat there, and I said to God, 'Well, if it means I'm going to die, that's OK.' I don't think I've ever felt that same kind of peace, the kind of serenity that I felt after acknowledging that maybe I was going to die of this TB.
I could go on for days about why I love yoga. One of my favorite parts is I can't think about anything else other than doing what the teacher tells me to do. For me, someone who has a million things going on at any given moment, that kind of surrender is liberating. I also learn so much about myself - my limitations, my potential, how to be mindful of an injury.
I always said to myself when I walked into the arena 'today they're going to know how good I am' and that was the attitude I carried with me every single time and just felt like at the end, you can't hold talent down. If you have it, eventually it's going to shine through and you just have to keep pushing.
I wrote Her First American and I always say it took me eighteen years. It took me that long was because after about five years I stopped and wrote Lucinella. I got stuck; it was too hard to write. Lucinella felt like a lark. I wanted to write about the literary circle because it amused me, and I allowed myself to do what I wanted to do. It's just one of the things I'm allowed to do if I feel like it.
I did a tweet about LGBTQ+ and someone was saying 'what's the + and what's the Q?' and some people would be like 'you should educate yourself it's disgusting, google it.' If I asked the question, they would answer it to me, so just try and treat people in the way I expect to be treated myself. So I do think that's been a problem in our community.
I realized that the reason why my head was so cluttered and why I was so unstable and not taking care of myself, all of these things, was that I was unhappy. If I wanted to get to a happier place and find some kind of peace, I was going to have to address problems with myself, things from my life up until that point that I hadn't dealt with: insecurities, fears, and those kinds of things.
I grew up between Detroit and Ghana, and I had to make friends in an instant. It sharpened my wit, and also, just for my own sanity's sake, I felt like I wanted to entertain myself. So I'm going through all these experiences, and I ask myself, 'Is this crazy? Is it? Wait, what's so funny about this?'
I eventually just imagined being a little boy who was quote unquote 'normal': who could learn like all the kids around me that I felt excluded from. And I imagined myself into one of these and into someone who could read.
I was never the kind of girl who said, "One day, I am going to be a beautiful bride, and I am going to have a family." I wanted to work and support myself and make my parents proud. All I did was work. I did three or four films a year, and felt like I was on a treadmill. Finally I said, "Nothing is exciting to me anymore." So I took six months off, which turned into a year, and said, "God, I don't miss it." That's when all kinds of interesting things crossed my path.
I'm the type of person that doesn't like to wait for people to do things for me, and I never want to feel stuck. Why sit around and be like, 'I wish my label would book me some studio time,' if I can just buy my own studio equipment and figure out how to run Pro Tools and record it myself?
Love is the answer, said the songs, and that's OK. It was OK, I supposed, as an answer. But no more than that. It was not a solution; it wasn't really even an answer, just a reply.
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