In particular, I found praying very disturbing, like swimming with bricks tied to your feet. And yet I was drawn to it constantly.
The early influences, in many ways, were in Baltimore. I was passing open windows where there might be a radio playing something funky. In the summertime, sometimes there'd be a man sitting on a step, playing an acoustic guitar, playing some kind of folk blues. The seed had been planted.
Jazz vision for me is seeing my art in musical term. It offers me an visual expressions in an ever-changing musical palette.