There’s the media-driven universe, in which the public perceives you in a superficial way. Then there’s the universe that you actually inhabit, where you have to get up even if you didn’t sleep so well, and you feel like crap and your face is swollen.
Through books and photographs, I saw a world that was not my own – and I realized that there was another world. That’s why I’m concerned about education, because it helps our children see other worlds.
hen you’re in your third adulthood, the one that leads to the grave, and you ask yourself, “What will I do between now and then?” Instead of thinking in terms of glamour, you start thinking in terms of reform – your contribution to the world.
One of my first role models was Eugene Lang, a wealthy businessman who went back to his elementary school in East Harlem and addressed the sixth-grade class. He looked out at that sea of faces and said, “If any of you wants to go to college, I will pay for it.”
Previously, the jokes were more related to current issues, political. Today people make about each other either funny or about people like Kim Kardashian. It’s brutal. Everything is so much vielschmutziger.
