I was very conscious of the world being this very crazed place that demanded explanation. I didn't see a whole lot of people who looked like me doing it on television.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Once I established myself doing crazy things and being extreme, people want to see it all the time.
It's a very strange and quite terrifying experience to watch yourself on TV. I never like to do it with other people.
I have a very specific memory of watching 'Singing in the Rain,' and looking at myself in the mirror after watching it and perceiving myself as one of those people that I was just watching on T.V. It was just kind of a knowing that this would be the world that I would enter into. And that's what I did.
I used to watch the world as if it was a performance and I would realize that certain things that people did moved me, and certain things didn't move me, and I tried to analyze, even at that age, six and seven and eight, why I was moved by certain things they did.
Long before the arrival of reality TV - before speed cameras, before recording angels on buses and lampposts - I felt I was living in a country that already knew how to watch itself. It was journalism that held the responsibility for seeing who we were and noticing what we did.
On the morning of September 11th, I was literally about 18 blocks from the World Trade Center. I witnessed in person what a lot of people witnessed in person, but what the world really saw on the television screen, I saw it with my own eyes that morning.
I was watching a black and white television in Cairo, MI., at my grandparents' house, and I watched Neil Armstrong step on the moon. At that point, it set the bit for me to be an astronaut, and it was kind of like a dream, but it really wasn't reality.
I discovered very early that it wasn't quite enough for me to imitate people.
I try to be of the world, rather than just observing it.
I stared at the television in shock, watching as my private life was revealed to the world.