My story as an artist has been about trial and error. It's been about artist development, character building, struggle, happiness and failure, family, and music.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My story of success and failure is not just about music and being famous. It's about living and loving and trying to find purpose in this crazy world.
My story is a freedom song of struggle. It is about finding one's purpose, how to overcome fear and to stand up for causes bigger than one's self.
I write about the trials and triumphs of contemporary life - and often the readers see themselves between the lines of the story.
A lot of my early career, I wrote story songs that had narratives, that had plots.
My failure, during the first five or six years of my art training, to get set in the right direction, and the disappointment which it caused me, drove me the more persistently into writing as an alternative.
All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.
When I started, I was an artist; I wanted to be an artist. I became an actor almost by accident. I acted for fifteen years and tried to produce. I looked for stories that were the story beneath the story that you thought you knew, like 'The Candidate'.
I never want to lose sight of my roots... A lot of artists want the riches and the fame. I want to tell stories you can put into the context of your life.
As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their work, but when the artist actually kicked in, I came to understand that in this romantic relationship I was not free to be myself, or to find myself, in order to begin the true work I needed to do.
My growth as an artist and a person has been so slow and gradual, it's hard to make a story out of it.