Writer, Director & Composer
I think it goes to this feeling of freedom, looking how freedom changes as you grow, being a very particular type of freedom that children have just by the nature of not having learned what the rules are. As we grow, we start to limit what we believe is possible. When you’re a kid, there isn’t a delineation between this is real, and this is my imagination. It’s all real. That’s your life experience.
Pushcart Award-Winning Poet
When I was younger, I never really thought of living past twenty-five…I felt like I was in a movie. I thought that I was living this movie idea of things and there’d be gunshots around you. You hear it hitting the concrete, and you’re like ‘Oh, shit’. Seriously, I didn’t think of it as real life. When you’re young, the idea that I’d known people that were killed early, you go to prison. These just felt like matter of fact. They seemed to be this part of life and you just accepted them.
Jazz Singer, Writer, Radio Host & Producer
Over the years I’ve had a career as an actor, as a writer. I wrote books for many years. I’ve been singer, singer, songwriter, radio host… When I look at the whole drawing on the napkin, and I tried to ask myself–What unifies all of these things? And it came down to songs. Songs really are at the heart of all of these pursuits. Something about songs really matters to me. In the same people believe in Jesus Christ, and they can’t really get through the day without connecting with that figure. That’s how I am about songs. They are the fuel for me.
Historian & Author of International Bestseller Wild Swans
Writing Wild Swans was the thing that resolved the trauma for me. When I first came to Britain in 1978, I was one of the first people to leave China and come to the West. I wrote about the experience in Wild Swans. And for many years I had nightmares of the horrible things I saw and experienced. Writing Wild Swans made all these nightmares disappear. It was a wonderful process. The writing process turned trauma in memory. I am now able to talk to you about my book, my life, to read it without too much pain. I think this is a luxury people in China still don’t have.
