As someone who was born and raised in Los Angeles, I was really interested in the idea of people who move here to get into the business, and some of them do become famous and then oftentimes they fall out of that fame in very terrible ways.

I haven't had a lot of celebrities around me growing up.

Part of our business is that you read interviews with these people and they don't really talk candidly about what's going on and the struggle - the struggle to do what you love and to maintain body image and to maintain this sort of false stature of who you're supposed to be as a role model and also who you are supposed to be to yourself personally and privately.

My parents are artists, so I grew up with my mom having bonfires, seven guitars, and talented musicians and artists around like Jack Hirschman.

Because the role-model pressure becomes so insane, the personal and private takes a backseat to whatever it takes to maintain that fame and to maintain that lifestyle, and before you know it you're not a human being anymore.

My parents cultured me a lot and they introduced me to a lot of artists, a lot of their friends.

I think it's hard to be taken seriously as a poet, period.