I have a whole regimen to my day: my vocal warm-ups, my prayers, my meditations... I pray three times a day. I try to have a real experience praying, not just do it. I really get deep into the idea and really try to get somewhere with it, to have an ...
Well, you can't throw heavy, analytical, thought-provoking songs at people 24/7. It's been my experience over the last 20 years that on a rare occasion, in a live setting, if you can slow people down to listen to two good ballads, then you're doing p...
I was distressed by the poor quality of the debate surrounding energy. I was also noticing so much green wash from politicians and big business. I was tired of the debate - the extremism, the nimbyism, the hair shirt. We need a constructive conversat...
I definitely wasn't cool in high school. I really wasn't. I did belong to many of the clubs and was in leadership on yearbook and did the musical theater route, so I had friends in all areas. But I certainly did not know what to wear, did not know ho...
When I was a kid, I used to listen to my Emerson radio late at night under the covers. I started by listening to jazz in the late 1940s and then vocal harmony groups like the Four Freshmen, the Modernaires and the Hi-Lo's. I loved Stan Kenton's big b...
With communication technology in general, there's a kind of certain critical mass of people. Once you get to 15% of the world's entire population using one communication technology, that's a big deal. It's beyond the theoretical at this point. The pe...
I just essentially stayed at home for three years and just learned to play as many instruments as I could and listened to as many singers as I could. Like, when I got to about 19/20, I started listening to singers. I normally just listened to bands. ...
I think any branding for me is band-related. It's really weird to get used to the exposure, because I am a naturally introverted person, and I'm not exactly social. Occasionally I can get comfortable enough to talk, but I spend a lot of my days not t...
When you look at every studio in the '20s or '30s, from Louis B. Mayer to Jack Warner, you see people who started with one plan and quickly shifted gears to adapt to a changing world. One of my favorite stories is that Walt Disney mortgaged his house...
When I launched the development of the GNU system, I explicitly said the purpose of developing this system is so we can use our computers and have freedom, thus if you use some other free system instead but you have freedom, then it's a success. It's...
What I enjoy doing more than anything is, I have my little antique car collection, and when the weather is pretty I like to get out one of my old cars. I have a little route I run down in the country, down Nachez Trace Parkway. The loop down through ...
YI teamed up with the Allstate Foundation to basically inform teens why it's important to drive safe. I feel I'm new on the road, so it's important to do these three main things: The first one is buckle up, the second one is slow down, don't speed, a...
And the thing about me is, I have a lot of mellow songs, because they're the easiest for me to write. I wanted to try to make some more upbeat songs, so, I ended up gravitating toward writing songs with friends, which was a great learning process, an...
When you're first learning how to do eyeliner, it's really hard to get both lids the same. A good tip for when you're putting it on, is to make sure your elbow is on a table. Make sure your arm's really stable. And make sure you have an eye makeup q-...
I took classical piano for a couple of years, but I sort of lost interest - I couldn't read a note today if I tried. I still enjoy that stuff, and I think I naturally gravitate towards the classical licks; in fact, I know that I do. I gravitate towar...
There’s a reason why researchers and organizations like Pew Research are doing the work that they do — they do so to make sure that we don’t forget about the populations that aren’t already in our networks [danah boyd, "An Old Fogey’s Analy...
You want to buy cars and houses and castles, all of that's on you and how America has systematized your mind to be into materialism. Hip-hop ain't got nothing to do with that. I'm glad that anybody making money has picked themselves up - I just want ...
It's very nice to be asked to anybody's wedding. Particularly if it's the Prince of Wales. I learned a lot from it, which was to end early and get away. I suppose one would have to look back historically and see who other royals had at their weddings...
I think, with age, you learn that it comes in bursts and you've got no control over it. I'm not one of those people who says, 'I've got to write a song every day.' I just store up ideas, and really I have to wait until it finds me; I know when I'm re...
When I'm home on a break, I lock myself in my room and play guitar. After two or three hours, I start getting into this total meditation. It's a feeling few people experience, and that's usually when I come up with weird stuff. It just flows. I can't...
Being young is an advantage. You've grown up with games as the dominant entertainment. You have a lot of experience of video games. So what do you want to see that's not been done? Innovation is really low cost for you. You can afford to take risks a...
