I think the sense of family and family achievement, plus the discipline which I received there from that one-room school were really very helpful in what I did later on. ↗
Later, in the early teens, I used to ride my bike every Saturday morning to the nearest airport, ten miles away, push airplanes in and out of the hangars, and clean up the hangars. ↗
So everything turned out fine, and we were given the opportunity to go to Washington and be briefed on the project of man in space, and given the opportunity to choose whether we wanted to get involved or not. ↗
I had to lie so much about sex, first when I was 15, because I wasn't supposed to be having it. And then when I got older, I lied to everybody I was having sex with, so I could have sex with other people. ↗
So, I was just a young guy, maybe with an idea, and Cecil Taylor, himself a rebel, would take a chance on a guy like me. It turned out to be a very symbiotic partnership. I learned a lot from him. ↗
So, rap has that quality, for youth anyway; it's a kind of blues element. It's physical, almost gymnastic. It speaks to you organically. Rap grows out of what young people really are today, not only black youth, but white - everybody. ↗
