I always do a little bit of improv. I did some of 'The Office,' a tiny bit in 'Extras,' a bit more in 'Derek.'
Jam Cruise is actually a comfortable place for me. My jamming skills and my improvisational skills have improved immensely as I've gone more solo, because I've had this opportunity.
When I was young, I took classical ballet lessons, but I wasn't very good at it. It was really frustrating because I wanted to be good at it. When I stopped having lessons, I began to dance and improvise, and I felt more comfortable.
I'm more of a writer than an actor, and I used to say that I'm mostly an improviser, though I haven't improvised in awhile.
I think I'm much more of a guitar-songwriter than a singer. I start with chords and then test out melodies rather than improvising over it.
There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.
There isn't much room for an outsider point of view in print any more.
In a novel, on the other hand, you not only have to describe the rooms, but the clothes, the characters and what they are thinking. It's a much more in-depth process.
I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing.
Why is it the philosopher who is expected to be easier and not some scientist who is even more inaccessible?
I really like Adam Curtis' 'Century of Self.' It's about how artists have failed the general public by being so exclusive, like being in an echo chamber. I was definitely more like that in my early twenties - my music was completely inaccessible.
It's a great feeling to be wanted, but it's more exciting to be inaccessible.
I have long begged off the question of my albums reflecting where I am 'at' personally. There is more inaccuracy in that approach than accuracy.
Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.
In East, South and Central Africa, the minority manipulated the majority into believing the minority was the majority, that there were more whites in the world than blacks; instilled in the blacks a sense of inferiority, inadequacy, worthlessness.
And inasmuch as the bridge is a symbol of all such poetry as I am interested in writing it is my present fancy that a year from now I'll be more contented working in an office than ever before.
One of the essential and most valid objections against the act of faith is that it is irrational, inasmuch as it offends against the syllogistic rule that the conclusion of an argument shall contain nothing more than the premises.
My faith, inasmuch as I have any, is more like a kind of Joseph Campbell thing, and even that frequently finds itself tested to oblivion in siren waters.
It makes a lot more sense for us to be investing in jobs and education rather than jails and incarceration.
In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn't be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.
