When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.
I use music as a medium to talk to people.
I started using this outlet of creativity - you know, going to the studio, writing, meeting these writers and producers - as the best form of representing myself to my fullest potential.
While my classmates were reading their textbooks, I drew in the margins.
As an artist, I really feel I need an outlet to exhibit all of my skills.
For me, acting was always a way to explore emotions - to dip into the well and really try to reach rock bottom down there. That was the most exciting part of it. I hadn't found anything that really allowed me to do that until I came upon acting.
I started writing because I wasn't getting things as an actor.
It's always nice to be able to capture your life's experiences in a song and hold the emotion in that way.
When art find no temple open, it takes refuge in the workshop.
From time to time, I've experimented with sculpture or metal design. It's a good break from just sitting behind the keyboard.
I find it easier to write about stuff that is frustrating.
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
I relax more when I'm behind the camera than anything else. I love that.
It's a blessing as an artist to express myself - whether that be via dance, via song or via speech - in so many different ways.
It's very intimate. There are certain moments where it feels like it's just you and the lens. It's something that has been a very stable, consistent thing in my life.
The reason I play music is to touch people - for selfish reasons, as well. It feels good to make someone else feel something, whether it's a kiss, a painting, good idea or it's a song.
I've been writing all my life, and playing bass came later on, when I was about 26. What I recognized with poetry and music that I had a different voice - there were things I wanted to express that I could not as an actor or even as a director. It was another avenue of expression that my soul needs.
I feel very lucky that when I'm burnt out of acting I take to the pen and I write something I want to direct.
When things become peculiar, frustrating and strange, I think it's a good time to start painting.
I took a few months off after my senior year was over, and I prayed and tried to figure out what was my plan and my purpose. That's how I started writing songs and playing guitar just to get my feelings out.
Writing is so entwined with my being that I can't imagine a life without it.
Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.
I didn't have the welfare. I didn't have the proper education. I didn't have these things. That's why it's almost like a complex in me that I want to explode myself in my films.
Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
Music is what I breathe, what I love to do. It keeps me alive.
