I was schooled at home, then didn't go to university because I married when I was 17. I didn't go into work until late in my life.
Looking back, I think that's why I did music. I'd get home from school and the house would be so quiet.
I was probably like 13 years old, 14. And I used to walk home doing the beatbox from school. That's how I created it. There was no walkmans back then, no iPods, no CDs. There was just me. Back then there was the boom box.
I started 'Society's Child' on a bus in East Orange as I was going home from school. I saw a black and white couple sitting there and started thinking about it.
I really hated school and so I just wanted to stay home and watch 'I Love Lucy' and watch the movies that inspired me to the point where we are sitting here.
During the Second World War, evacuated to non-Jewish households, I encountered Christianity at home and in school.
I do a kind of homeschooling where some of it's on the computer and some of it's classes around the city. So sometimes I'll have a class in the morning or do school at home.
Once I took a bus from my home in Maryland to Philadelphia to live on the streets with some musicians for a few weeks, and then my parents sent me to boarding school at Andover to shape me up.
I come from an Irish working-class background but went to a posh school, and any type of pretension was quickly mocked at home. I've always had a keen eye for pretension.
So I started home schooling. I was a little freaked out about that, because I' m such a social person, involved in everything. It was awesome. I loved it and I loved being home.
I awake, I meditate, get the kids off to school, go to the gym, go to the Favored Nations office, and usually at around 1 pm I'm home and do music the rest of the day.
When I'm home, I've got the kind of time that other dads who live there full time don't have. I can go and have lunch with my kids at school and that sort of thing.
But in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school.
My maternal grandmother - she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was a member of the municipal library, and she brought home two or three books a week for me. They could be dime novels or Balz...
We're not a vocational school. If someone wants to get a high-paying job, I would hope that there are easier ways to do it than working through a formal computer science curriculum.
I wore goofy hats to school and did musical theater. Most people thought I was a dork. But if you have a sense of humor about it, no one can bring you down.
I didn't know at all I wanted to do TV. I thought I might go to law school. I might want to become a history professor.
I like historical pieces. History was my favorite subject in school, it was the only subject I excelled in. I love the idea of history and the idea that we may have the opportunity to learn from our past mistakes.
Even in high school I was very interested in history - why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.
When you tell people you're in history, they give you this pained expression because that was the course they hated in high school. But history can be exciting, intellectually rigorous, and fun.
For example, I loved English and history at school. I would have loved to have done a degree in either. But my Mom said I didn't have time for university.
