People call to keep me abreast of what's going on.

I've been fortunate in that I've been forced to move from zone to zone.

We were doing performance art as far back as 1965, just not calling it that.

You know, face painting in non-Western cultures is a sign of collectivism, is a sign of one representing the community, it's not unique at all.

It took me a long time to reach the decision to retire, actually, from the Art Ensemble. But it seemed more important to me to share the vitality of Aikido and the vitality of Zen training with people, even though it would be a smaller number of people, it seemed to give them something that could last and improve their lives.

In fact, since no one's been interested in my work, I took the responsibility recently to invest in my own work, so I'm producing a concert that was done at the Vision Festival in May.

In 1993, I retired from the Art Ensemble of Chicago to devote myself full time to Buddhist studies and to the practice of Aikido.