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To be honest, in my five years as an electrician, I never got the license.

I went to Carnegie Mellon and was an electrical engineer, but electrical engineering wasn't right for me.

I suppose the reason I chose electrical engineering was because I had always been interested in electricity, involving myself in such projects as building radios from the time I was a child.

I became an electrician after high school. But I always had this thing in me to write. But it was always a little shameful. To say you were a poet was saying you were kind of crazy, and I carried that around for a long time. I still kind of carry that. And I think it might be true, actually.

My mum is a school teacher and my dad is an electrician.

When I was growing up, I installed refrigerators in supermarkets. My father was an electrical engineer.

My mum brought me to my first job when I was 12. I started electrical work at her plant. She was an engineer, a technical expert, at one of the plants in the south, and in the summer she brought me in and I learnt how industrial things work: casting, electricity, maintenance, everything.

In the early 1980s, I got into a war with my management - they just kept on suing me and I lost everything. So I had to go out on tour to make sure the electricity stayed on.