What’s the secret to surviving?
I should be dead from a hundred different situations, but here I am.
I remember coming out of the coma and not being able to distinguish between dreams and reality.
I asked the nurse, am I OK?
The nurse said no.
My heart started sinking.
But within five minutes, I began to rebound.
I remember moving my toes and thinking, OK, this is how I’m going to come back.
One step at a time.
My dad had me when he was 63.
He had problems, but he gave me that fighter instinct.
I was in foster care by the time I was 13.
My best friend was murdered running around with the wrong kids.
I ended up on the ground one day with someone holding a 9-millimeter pistol to my head.
But I somehow always knew there would be a way out.
Relationships are what make you.
I made friends as a runaway at age 12, and those are still my closest friendships.
There’s a guy I know named Malcolm Spellman; we’ve been friends for 40 years.
We’ve done everything together since the projects.
You need that grounding influence.
If you have that ground beneath you, you’ve got the option to resurrect yourself.
Like, with me and music.
I taught myself music as a kid.
I snuck into classrooms at UC Berkeley to learn as much as I could.
I saved myself, song by song.
But then after the crash, I had to do it all over again.
My hand didn’t work.
I can’t move it at the wrist, and I can’t really move my fingers.
I actually had to stop playing with my fingers, and now I play with my entire hand.
I call it the claw.
I went from fine playing to sort of attacking the instrument.
It’s very rugged, but it improved my sound.
