I am from a family of artists. Here I am, making a living in the arts. It has not been a rebellion. It's as though I had taken over the family Esso station.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
How do you rebel in a family of rebels? That's the age-old question. I guess I could have by not going into the arts, but the thing is, I couldn't do anything else.
Art is maybe a subversive activity. There is a certain rebellion when you are an artist at heart, even if only in the art of living.
In my parents' generation, rebellion was pop culture. It's not anymore.
I went through a period of great rebellion within my family, when I was about 9 or 10. I was mad, I had no focus, had no real interest in anything, and so I started to do things that were just rebellious and stupid.
I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became.
I was still interested in the youth rebellion but never-the-less I stopped being a victim. Stopped trying to attack the establishment realizing that it takes too much of your energy.
I suppose for me as an artist it wasn't always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.
Growing up, all I did was work and vacation, but I loved it, no one pushed me into anything. The thing was I developed no special skills. I don't have any resentment because I am a performer and I've always felt that, but it did take its toll socially.
I was exposed to the arts, but there was no one in my family who was an artist.
My father was a businessman, but my mother was an intellectual. She cared about culture, politics, and philosophy, so I became interested in the protest aspect of Latin American art.