Art is the heart's explosion on the world. Music. Dance. Poetry. Art on cars, on walls, on our skins. There is probably no more powerful force for change in this uncertain and crisis-ridden world than young people and their art. It is the consciousness of the world breaking away from the strangle grip of an archaic social order.

I've always been prepared to write about the hard things. Only for healing, teaching, and enlightening purposes not to hurt or disparage anyone.

I had to find meaning in it. So I go through this, I see all these homies die; I see all this terrible devastation, people sitting in prison. I've been saved from prison, from death, and from heroine addiction. What am I going to do with that?

The more you know, the more you owe.

There are choices you have to make not just once

Eventually I went back to high school. I went to a coaching center in my neighborhood. I had to leave the homeless situation because it was so bad and I knew that I was falling deeper and deeper.

I was arrested and put in murder's row. They were trying to get me for some murders I didn't do. They had me in a cell next to Charles Manson; he was going to trial at the time. And it was all a row of black and brown guys and one white guy: Charles Manson.