I would begin by collecting lithographs and etchings. It's a way of coming in and benefiting from real quality art. Even younger artists make wonderful prints. Prints can become very valuable. That's how I began collecting.

The conceptual artist Ai WeiWei illustrates the schizoid society that rapid change has produced - sometimes by reassembling Ming-style furniture into absurd and useless arrangements, or by carefully painting and antiquing a Coca-Cola logo on an ancient Chinese pot.

In the early 1990s we witnessed the emergence of a revitalized contemporary Chinese art world that began as a reaction against the government-approved Social Realist style. Zhang Xiaogang, Huang Yong Ping, Ai WeiWei, Yue Minjun, and Wang Guangyi were among the first group of artists to establish a movement that became known as Cynical Realism.

It's possible to have more than one interest. I've been a painter and did summer stock.

As writers, you spend so long trying to build your cred as a writer, and then everything comes together at the same time: your artist career happens when your songwriter career is, too.

I like writing comic pages, discovering the rhythm of the panels, learning how much you can and can't express. It's good to stretch myself as a writer instead of always doing prose work; I write screenplays for the same reason.

Music is my thing. It's my thing; it's what I love. It's what I do. It's football to me; it's Christmas to me; religion to me; poetry to me.

I fell in love with art and music and dance and acting and how all those things can cultivate something really special and unique - depending on the performance and the show. That really kind of helped me develop my love of theater.