Growing up, I didn't come from a musical family. Neither of my parents played an instrument, sang out loud, or listened to the radio with frequency. The record collection in the living room was only about 2 feet long - and that included 4 solid inches of Neil Diamond and Herb Alpert.

In 1989, I had a fellowship to teach for Yale in China for two years. I came back from California to New Haven to spend the summer learning Chinese, but because of Tiananmen Square, Yale cancelled the program.

I had a 20-year career. I have two children. The advantage of writing later in my life is that I already had a whole mature realm of accomplishments and responsibilities, an identity outside of being a writer.

Strangely enough, my favorite airport is Logan Airport in Boston - but largely for sentimental reasons. My first real summer job was working as a journeyman for the airport's resident maintenance crew - a small army of union electricians, plumbers, and carpenters.

Inequality reigns in horrifying ways, and not everyone can even read, but the world of media and advertising withholds very little from the imagination of the dispossessed.

When I listen to music from different eras, I sense different things. The 1940s music, there's so much optimism and romance, maybe because they just solved the biggest problem on Earth at that time - World War II. In the 1960s, there was so much creativity and innovation in sound.

I've been writing music since 4th grade, and I love putting words together and expressing things in a way that you can move your head to and you can really relate to, because I have a lot to say.

If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports.