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lenneblr · 11 years ago

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Jaden, Willow and Me. An interview.

NYT: What have you been reading?

WILLOW: Quantum physics. Osho.

JADEN: “The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life” and ancient texts; things that can’t be pre-dated.

LENNE: My Covered California duplicate mailings.

NYT: I’m curious about your experience of time. Do you feel like life is moving really quickly? Is your music one way to sort of turn it over and reflect on it?

WILLOW: I mean, time for me, I can make it go slow or fast, however I please, and that’s how I know it doesn’t exist.

JADEN: It’s proven that how time moves for you depends on where you are in the universe. It’s relative to beings and other places. But on the level of being here on earth, if you are aware in a moment, one second can last a year. And if you are unaware, your whole childhood, your whole life can pass by in six seconds. But it’s also such a thing that you can get lost in.

LENNE: I just saw Interstellar. That movie was long.

WILLOW: Because living.

LENNE: Exactly Willow, because living.

JADEN: Right, because you have to live. There’s a theoretical physicist inside all of our minds, and you can talk and talk, but it’s living.

WILLOW: It’s the action of it.

LENNE: It's why I see a therapist.

NYT: What are some of the themes that recur in your work?

JADEN: The P.C.H. being one of them; the melancholiness of the ocean; the melancholiness of everything else.

WILLOW: And the feeling of being like, this is a fragment of a holographic reality that a higher consciousness made.

LENNE: And really, what does "August and Everything After" ACTUALLY mean?

JADEN: [bursts into laughter] As soon as me and Willow started releasing music, that’s one thing that the whole world took away is, okay, they unlocked another step of honesty. If these guys can be honest about everything, then we can be more honest.

LENNE: Matthew McConaughey, Adam Duritz, Us.

How have you gotten better?

WILLOW: Caring less what everybody else thinks, but also caring less and less about what your own mind thinks, because what your own mind thinks, sometimes, is the thing that makes you sad.

LENNE: Just like NOT caring.

JADEN: Exactly. Because your mind has a duality to it. So when one thought goes into your mind, it’s not just one thought, it has to bounce off both hemispheres of the brain. When you’re thinking about something happy, you’re thinking about something sad. When you think about an apple, you also think about the opposite of an apple. It’s a tool for understanding mathematics and things with two separate realities. But for creativity: That comes from a place of oneness. That’s not a duality consciousness. And you can’t listen to your mind in those times — it’ll tell you what you think and also what other people think.

LENNE: Once I thought, Hey I want to eat Jaden’s apple, and then my dual mind was like no you don’t.

WILLOW: And then you think about what you think, which is very dangerous.

LENNE: Sorry Will.

Do you think of your new music as a continuation of your past work?

LENNE: Great question.

JADEN: I think Willow’s had a huge evolution.

WILLOW: I mean, “Whip My Hair” was a great thing. When I look back I think, “Wow, I did so much for young black girls and girls around the world. Telling them that they can be themselves and to not be afraid to be themselves.” And I’m doing that now but in a whole different way-

LENNE: She cut her hair-

WILLOW: -coming from source energy and universal truths. People will be, like –

LENNE: “Oh she cut her hair-“

WILLOW: -“Oh, I’m not going to make a song about exactly how I feel, all the bad ways that I feel, and put it out in the world so everyone can judge me.” But for me, it’s a part of me, it’s my artistic journey.

LENNE: You look really good with short hair.

JADEN: That’s another thing: What’s your job, what’s your career? Nah, I am. I’m going to imprint myself on everything in this world.

LENNE: So it’s a continuation. FOR SURE.

From left: Willow and Jaden Smith and Lenne Klingaman

Credit

Nathaniel Wood

How do you write? What’s your process?

JADEN: She gets in the booth and just starts singing.

WILLOW: I mean, the beat is usually what moves me. Or I think of concepts. Then when I hear a beat that is, like, elaborating on that concept, I just go off.

JADEN: She freestyles and finds out what she likes. Same thing with me.

LENNE: Same thing with me. Or I sing words other people wrote. Sometimes I just do that.

WILLOW: You piece it together. You piece together those little moments of inspiration.

LENNE: You piece words you made up with a lot of words someone else wrote.

What are you searching for in those pieced-together moments?

JADEN: Honestly, we’re just trying to make music that we think is cool. We don’t think a lot of the music out there is that cool.

LENNE: Not. Cool.

JADEN: So we make our own music. We don’t have any song that we like to listen to on the P.C.H. by any other artist, you know?

LENNE: Nothing sounds good on the P.C.H.

WILLOW: That’s what I do with novels. There’re no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels,

LENNE: We write our own novels. So we can listen to them on the PCH.

WILLOW: And then I read them again, and it’s the best thing.

JADEN: Willow’s been writing her own novels since she was 6.

LENNE: Jaden and I wrote one entitled “Dad’s Chest Hair.”

But do your collaborative relationships inspire you in different directions?

JADEN & LENNE: Totally.

WILLOW: Me and Jaden just figured out that our voices sound like chocolate together. As good as chocolate tastes, it sounds that good.

LENNE: It really does sound like chocolate.

How does fashion relate to what you do?

JADEN: Willow just dropped a song (“Cares”), let me quote the lyrics: “I do not care what people say.” We both don’t really care.

LENNE: Told you.

JADEN: I like to wear things that I make, but I throw it on as though I was throwing on anything. It looks cool, sometimes.

WILLOW: I like to go to places with my high-fashion things where there are a lot of cameras. So I can just go there and be like, “Yep, yep, I’m looking so sick.” But in my regular life, I put on clothes that I can climb trees in.

LENNE: I like to go to Target and wear clothes I can shop for turkey breast and saline solution in and be like “Yep yep I’m looking Fllllyyyyyyy.”

What are the things worth having?

JADEN: Something that’s worth buying to me is like Final Cut Pro or Logic.

WILLOW: A canvas. Paint. A microphone.

LENNE: Health insurance.

JADEN: Anything that you can shock somebody with. The only way to change something is to shock it. If you want your muscles to grow, you have to shock them. If you want society to change, you have to shock them.

LENNE: If you don’t want the flu get a flu shot.

WILLOW: That’s what art is, shocking people. Sometimes shocking yourself.

LENNE: But not actually. Willow did that once. That lamp was SUPES vintage.

You mentioned breathing earlier, and it’s also an idea that recurs in your songs.

WILLOW: Breathing is meditation; life is a meditation. You have to breathe in order to live, so breathing is how you get in touch with the sacred space of your heart.

LENNE: Will said it best, you have to breathe to live. Like you actually HAVE to breathe.

JADEN: When babies are born, their soft spots bump: It has, like, a heartbeat in it. That’s because energy is coming through their body, up and down.

LENNE: Like being shocked.

WILLOW: Prana energy.

JADEN: It’s prana energy because they still breathe through their stomach. They remember. Babies remember.

WILLOW: When they’re in the stomach, they’re so aware, putting all their bones together, putting all their ligaments together. But they’re shocked by this harsh world.

JADEN: By the chemicals and things, and then slowly…

WILLOW: As they grow up, they start losing.

JADEN: You know, they become just like us.

LENNE: Namaste.

So is the hardest education the unlearning of things?

WILLOW: Yes, basically, but the crazy thing is it doesn’t have to be like that.

JADEN: Here’s the deal: School is not authentic because it ends. It’s not true, it’s not real. Our learning will never end. The school that we go to every single morning, we will continue to go to.

LENNE: Sometimes the hardest education is unlearning how to learn so you can really learn what you have unlearned.

WILLOW: Forever, ‘til the day that we’re in our bed.

JADEN: Kids who go to normal school are so teenagery, so angsty.

WILLOW: They never want to do anything, they’re so tired.

LENNE: Were like, NAP TIME!

JADEN: You never learn anything in school. Think about how many car accidents happen every day.

LENNE: Especially on the PCH.

JADEN: Driver’s ed? What’s up? I still haven’t been to driver’s ed because if everybody I know has been in an accident, I can’t see how driver’s ed is really helping them out.

LENNE: We definitely should unlearn how to drive.

WILLOW: I went to school for one year. It was the best experience but the worst experience. The best experience because I was, like, “Oh, now I know why kids are so depressed.” LENNE: MTV.

WILLOW: But it was the worst experience because I was depressed.

(Lenne hugs Willow and Jaden hugs them.)

So what’s next?

JADEN: I have a goal to be just the most craziest person of all time. And when I say craziest, I mean, like, I want to do like Olympic-level things. I want to be the most durable person on the planet.

LENNE: Like a durable Olympian.

WILLOW: I think by the time we’re 30 or 20, we’re going to be climbing as many mountains as we can possibly climb.

LENNE: Yeah, maybe by then, or by the time that time no longer exists, like by the end of this interview, we will all just be eating apples on the PCH with Gold Medals and robots for cars, just BREATHING. Like really breathing. Never forget to breathe. I’m serious, you have to breathe to live.

Willow’s “3″ is available now on iTunes. Jaden’s “Cool Tapes Vol. 2″ will be available beginning at 12 a.m. with the download of his new app called Jaden Experience. Lenne is recording the book on tape for “Dad’s Chest Hair” which will be sold on her personal website.

This interview has been edited and condensed. Lenne Klingaman was not present.

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/jaden-and-willow-smith-exclusive-joint-interview/?_r=0

#jaden willow UnlearnToDrive PranaEnergy Interview FakeInterview IAteJadensApple #jaden smith #willow smith

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lenneblr · 12 years ago

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“My plan wasn’t just to show it to executives, but to show it to the world so that the people could have a voice in this as well.” -Lena Waithe

I’m sure many of you have seen people talking about Lena Waithe recently and perhaps you’ve seen some of the other work she’s done (Dear White People). Maybe you haven’t - you should change that. I watched the four part pilot presentation and it wasn’t until the fourth part that I was completely sold. Now don’t confuse that statement, I really loved and laughed at the first three parts, but it’s (intentionally) in the fourth part where we see the heart of the show, the honesty, the realness.

Waithe wrote & created TWENTIES, a single camera comedy about three black women in their twenties, and shopped it around to networks.

A lot of networks read the script and loved it, but they either thought there wasn’t an audience for it or that it already existed. Of course I became extremely frustrated because I knew neither of those things were true. So I realized I had to show these network executives that TWENTIES was one of a kind and that there was nothing on TV like it. And I figured the best way to do that was to shoot a pilot presentation, which meant we would shoot a few pivotal scenes from the script, edit them together, and give people a sense of how the show would look and feel. Lucky for me, Justin Simien (writer/director DEAR WHITE PEOPLE) offered to direct it and Flavor Unit was willing to pay for it. Now I had the opportunity to show people what I was going for instead of trying to explain it to them. My plan wasn’t just to show it to executives, but to show it to the world so that the people could have a voice in this as well. And just so we’re clear: this is not a web series! I repeat this is not a web series. Not that there’s anything wrong with doing a web series. I’ve done one. My goal is to partner with a network that understands what I’m going for.

Spread the word about this show.

The good news is I don’t want your money. There’s no Kickstarter or IndieGoGo attached to this project. All we want you to do is commit to sharing TWENTIES with twenty of your friends. The more you spread the word the better chance we have of getting it on TV. We’ll keep pitching. You keep sharing. Let’s do this!

Click through to watch.

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