I try to acknowledge both the sacred and the silly in my work. That goes for the live show as well. If I find myself in my head or dwelling in seriousness, I think of my friends back home and how they'd be laughing at me.
I consider myself a product of Alaska. The love and the debt that I feel to my home state - you always want your hometown to be the proudest of you, and so it's heartbreaking to hear people say snarky things.
Equipped with two cell phones - one for work and another for home - I like to think of myself as a kind of 21st-century digital pioneer, ready to network, fax, page, e-mail and - oh, yes - talk at will.
In all honesty, at that time, I never saw myself as an author... I was just a Mom in a state of panic, trying to enter a short story contest to win the prize money in order to keep the lights on in my home.
I can't drag myself away from 'Final Cut Pro.' It is a digital video editing system. I am obsessed with it, but I am always away from home, and I can't use it.
I have continued to work at different things, and rebuilt my home all by myself. I did it for the sake of satisfaction at doing something. I did it because I happened to be where I was.
Life is composed of different inventions. I have continued to work at different things and rebuilt my home all by myself. I did it for the sake of satisfaction at doing something.
It accumulates over the years and I've led so many bands of my own now and forced myself into new situations... You would hope that you play better and better - until you just get too feeble to do it anymore.
I used to believe that people are only born once, but now I feel I have been reborn, like I was given a new life. I see myself as a child, full of energy and hope.
On two or three book tours, I have visited bookstores in the Mall of America and signed copies of my books and introduced myself to store employees who I hope will sell them.
With documentary-film projects, you hope you highlight an area of concern people haven't thought about before. A lot of times, I'm asking myself - 'This seems to be a significant problem. What can be done that hasn't been done?'
Before I gave birth to Hope, I had a miscarriage. The pain was so enormous, I had to write myself out of it. I kept a diary and did not feel entirely complete until Hope was born.
When you're doing an out-and-out comedy, the notion of preparing for a character - I hope I don't reveal too much of myself here - but, uh, no, I'm not doing anything.
I've always littered my songs with jokes. You might need to dig a little deeper to find the humor, but I would totally object to being some kind of distraught personality. I've never tried to attach myself to that.
I have a cousin who is a spiritual advisor for Native veterans in Canada, so I'm very familiar with the history of Natives in the military. And growing up as an American Indian myself, the story of Ira Hayes is one that is often told.
We all had to learn Southern accents. It wasn't a big research show. With the 'Wounded Knee' project, I locked myself in my apartment with history books so I would know what we're talking about.
If you're not interested in history, if you're living for the day, you need some sort of cliche hook. I certainly don't think of myself as a cult anything. It's a strange thing to even consider pursuing.
Doing jobs that are completely different to the last thing I did pushes me as an actor to change as much as I can. It would be easy for me to stay in a similar vein of characters or jobs, but I'm drawn to challenging myself.
One day I actually took the list into the bathroom and I put it up against my face and looked in the mirror and I realized I had one of two choices, change the list or change myself.
Photography is a demanding action sport. The light can change so quickly. I often find myself sprinting so that I can catch the perfect light falling on a photogenic subject.
Singles needed to come back. And what I tried to do in my online experiment was to change the rules for myself and make available at a more regular pace the fruits of my labour, for people who decided they wanted to support my recordings.
