We have always policed the bodies of people of color, and black people in particular. The Jim Crow South is a classic example. White flight in the North. School segregation. Gerrymandering.
At 14, I was in my own little classic rock country band. Then, after high school, I started another band called Northern Comfort. That was based out of Chico, Calif.
I studied classical guitar in school, and that type of stuff has led to writing for Kronos.
My background in music is classical - I did graduate school in music. At that time, I was studying composition, but I was studying classical guitar very seriously.
As an undergraduate, I studied the Greek and Roman classics, and I went to graduate school in classics intending to work on the presentation of moral issues in various Greek and Roman tragedies.
I didn't care for most of the books I was being asked to read in school. I started reading like crazy right after high school when I got a job in a mental hospital. I was working my way through college, and I did a lot of night shifts, and there was nothing to do. So I read like crazy, serious stuff, all the classics.
In high school, I used to draw on my arms with a Sharpie. I knew I was gonna have a lot of tattoos. I'm not exactly classified as an artist, so my drawings could only go so far as I could take 'em. Now my tats are all a story: There's not one I can remember where I got a tat just to get a tat. It's all a part of me. I don't think I'm finished yet.
I was never top of the class at school, but my classmates must have seen potential in me, because my nickname was 'Einstein.'
It took me until my teenage years to realize that I was medicating with music. I was pushing back against my stupid school uniform, instructors who called me by my last name and my classmates, who, while friendly enough, were not at all inspiring.
I actually went to law school with Jim Comey. We were in the same class, and he was respected by our classmates just like he was respected by the agents that he supervised.
I loved school so much that most of my classmates considered me a dork.
Most guys in high school wore clothes seen only by their classmates. I wore clothes seen by the world.
The problem with public school is not overcrowding in the classroom. The problem is not teacher unions. The problem is not underfunding or lack of computer equipment. The problem is your damn kids.
I was inspired to shoot 'Look Back at It' in a high school because I'm like a voice of the youth. When the youth sees me in a classroom, I want them to be inspired to accomplish their dreams. I was just like them in a classroom at one point. It all starts in a classroom.
I consider the world, this Earth, to be like a school, and our life the classrooms.
It is one thing to open the schools to all children regardless of race. It is another to train the teachers, to build the classrooms, and to attempt to eliminate the effects of past educational deficiencies. It is still another to find ways to feed the incentive to learn and keep children in school.
In second grade, I told a bunch of kids there was a homeless person living between the portable classrooms outside our school. It caused panic, and the principal had to announce on the P.A. system that no one was living there. I pretended I didn't know who started the rumor.
Due process gives teachers the latitude to use their professional judgment in their classrooms, to advocate for their students, and to not fear retribution for speaking the truth or teaching controversial subjects like evolution. As political winds shift in school districts, due process also wards off patronage or nepotism.
I worked as a clerical assistant at the Department of Health and Social Security for about three months before I went to drama school.
A lot of kids spent more time out of school than in, but I always loved school and thought it was my way out of Cleveland, and out of poverty.
