I wasn't truly comfortable with myself until I was about 30. I spent so much time and energy wondering if I wasn't worthy, and trying to find people to validate me, instead of validating myself.
The greatest lesson I have learned in life is that I am enough simply because I have been given life. Growing up, I constantly found myself trying to please others because I wanted to be included and validated. I expended myself completely.
I was just putting way too much pressure on myself. I was just trying to get that validation from my dad. It got so bad I remember my high school coach telling him not to show up to games.
When I'm writing, I'm constantly thinking about myself, because it's the only experience I have to draw on. And I don't see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience, but I know that my songs have validity to them, and that's why the fans are there.
I have that normal male thing of valuing myself according to the job I do.
I have started exploring my own life and have started valuing myself. I have started valuing my individuality.
When I walk on stage, it's a release valve for me. Life is stressful anyway, so therefore, when I walk on stage, it releases all those stressful situations, and I feel good about myself.
I would be lying if I said it wasn't cool to see myself on the cover of 'Vanity Fair,' right? It's, like, what am I doing there? This is bizarre.
I make up stories about people who are either imaginary or some variation of myself.
Since the early '80s, I've found myself in war zones in various parts of the world.
I work with the options I have in front of me and my reasons for choosing a job can vary enormously depending on the circumstances. Sometimes I take a job because it's a group of people I'm dying to work with, and sometimes it can be a desire to shake things up a bit and not to take myself too seriously.
Starting with the lyrics, 'Only scared of myself and the truth in the stars/I'm a king, I'm the dirt, God within me shine,' the first half of '6 Weeks' delves into my attempts to balance the notion that I have an existential purpose with the realization that I am nothing against the vastness of the universe.
I'm not tough, and I never have been. I suppose over the years I've built up kind of a veneer to protect myself because I have functioned on my own for a long, long time, and I have never had a lot of flunkies preceding me to clear the way.
The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela, where I couldn't find a place for myself, for years and years.
The mass of Venom. I mean, he's like a big, foreboding, physical presence. Actually, let me correct myself - the eyes, the tongue, the mouth, those are his most distinguishing traits, and so making those look as photoreal and true to the comics as we possibly could was super important to me.
When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs.
My puppets are far more liberated than I am. Ventriloquism is a useful way of expressing myself.
I do laugh when I hear myself saying, 'I am a ventriloquist.' I am definitely suited to it, though. I took it and ran with it quite hungrily. It is not for everyone, but it is just the chance to write for a character.
I would enjoy venturing into music, as I do write songs and compose music! And, of course, dance, rhythm and performance are in my blood, so eventually I see myself doing something in that area, surely!
I gambled and I lost. I failed in securing my options for this choice for myself, but I succeeded in verifying the Dark Age is still with us.
