Unfortunately, I haven't thought sufficiently about art. What I never realized - and it's really stupid - is the art world is the art world because all these thousands of famous and not-famous artists do things, over centuries. This hadn't occurred to me.
I think I'm no different to my friends who are doctors or businessmen or architects - we all started watching films of the golden age together. But whether I'm making films or writing poetry or doing photography, it's very much rooted in my sense of unease. And that's really where everything goes back to.
At 16 I was living in the Congo, and, you know, it's your teenage time. I really wanted to find a way to express myself, so I started to write songs in the Congo, and I think that's why my music is quite open, with a lot of different influences.
I listened to a lot of Michael Jackson growing up. A lot of Boyz II Men. I loved Mariah Carey. Just big vocalists. I was always that kid who just wore whatever and did whatever.
I love painting and music, of course. I don't know nearly as much about them as I know about poetry. I've certainly been influenced by fiction. I was overwhelmed by War and Peace when I read it, and I didn't read it until I was in my late 20s.
My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.
I have had three masters, Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt.
I went to the Academy and studied with Stuck who was then a big man. But didn't interest me. I didn't know that before me there was Kandinsky and Klee who had also studied with Stuck. He had a good name at that time.
People ask me all the time, "What are your influences? Are you trying to do Beckett?" It's like, "No, I'm trying to do me." Whatever that is. I don't know what that is, but that's the basis. I'm trying to be true and I'm trying to be honest.
Any creation of art is conceived and born under influences, amidst the atmosphere of reverie and the most customary volition of the artist. It is there, in any case, that his work arises from.
After high school I went to the San Francisco Art Institute, and I began a formalized art education where we went through the history of art but we also went through the art of my contemporaries.
In writing songs, I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie.
Influences come from everywhere. I don't really feel like I had too many influences for the first record because I grew up listening to music in church, and that was pretty much it. I didn't really grow up listening to AC/DC and all those bands.
Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn't hurt your appreciation of the painting.
When I was young, I went with my mum to see some really random independent films, which really spoke to me: 'My Beautiful Laundrette,' 'Secrets and Lies'... It wasn't all arthouse, though!
Varese, Apollinaire, Ezra Pound, Leger, Gleizes, Severini, Villon, Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Marie Laurencin, Cocteau and many others were to me household names in the literal sense - names of familiar figures around the house.
People have asked me throughout the years which directors have influenced me. I don't know their names, because I was mostly influenced when I'd see a film and think, "Man, I want to be sure to never do anything like that." So I never learned their names. It wasn't a matter of copying or emulating somebody I admired. It was getting rid of a lot of stuff.
The only thing the Pop Artists had in common is that we all had been commercial artists in some manner. Lichtenstein was a draftsman; I was a billboard painter, but we didn't work together. I didn't meet Andy Warhol until 1964.
I think it was Henry Moore who was asked where he got his ideas for his sculptures, and he said something like, "I continue to do as an adult the things I did as a child." I think that's what art is about.
One of my biggest influences of all time would be somebody like Tom Waits. David Bowie is another huge influence. I'm also a big fan of St. Vincent and Leslie Feist.
A lot of the artists that people equate my work to, I didn't find out about until after graduate school.
I've had shows as a painter, as a photographer, I've done shows as a sculptor. I've done a lot of different things and it all comes from experiences that you have in your life, in your creative environment. They all help - I don't even know if they help; maybe they make it worse but they all influence each other, for sure.
I got a lot of influences. I got relevant influences today. I got influences that you wouldn't even think of. I'm very influenced by Marilyn Manson. His style is ridiculous. Like, honestly, if you want me to keep it 100, Marilyn Manson has as much style as Kanye West and Pharrell Williams.
I know we play a part in the story of progressive music, but for us those influences are the real fathers, the ones that we were interested in.
I love and collect contemporary art and go to all the art fairs. I love Damien Hirst and Matthew Barney. I grew up in Italy and had a humanistic education in philosophy and literature - things I love and appreciate. People are richer and more complex than just their day-to-day professional pursuits might suggest.
