Don’t worry; I speak no Italian so you are way ahead of me. Don’t worry about a thing.

Yes

Yes, sì. Well the work, it is a retrospective of drawings, photographs, paintings and silk-screens that I had done from 1967 to the present. So it spans from 1967 to recent work.

Yes, I mean that was my...you know I thought that....I mean what I had hoped to be was a painter. I wanted to write and paint and that's what I thought my vocation would be. So I was much more prepared to be an artist than I was a singer but even though I haven't done a lot of artwork publicly, I have always done it since I was a young girl so this show reflects the work that I was doing privately.

Well, I think it's better because I’ve never studied music and I’m not an accomplished musician. I’m a performer and I write songs and sing but I think that as an artist it encompasses all of the different things that I do because I do work with photography and painting and writing and music. So I think ‘an artist’ is probably a nice broad explanation.

...to experience the different genres (she laughs). Well, you know I think that seems very Italian coz if you think of somebody like, you know, da Vinci, he's a good model for us all in terms of doing many different things at once. I mean he was an architect and a scientist and an inventor and a painter and a sculptor. So it's a very... there's a lot of precedent for... well I mean, William Blake and so many different artists move in different mediums and I think that just seems to be the way that I work.

I think that performing is where it comes very easy to me and the thing that's most difficult is writing and probably is the thing that is most important to me. But I find that it's always... because I had never any plans to sing or perform for people but that seems to be something that I can do and it seems to be that I had a calling toward that. That’s probably the thing that I feel most natural in me, just to be able to get up in front of people and talk and sing. It just seems to be something that I can do.

Well, I also have a song called 'Strange Messenger' so I think John Smith.... the exhibition was put together by the curator of the Andy Warhol Museum about two years ago and he called it that. In my song the 'strange messenger' is like a rock and roll nigger, someone outside society who tries to contribute TO society. In the song 'strange messenger' I was specifically talking about abolitionists during the civil war who spoke out against slavery but the 'strange messenger' is always someone who has a message for the people but is probably estranged or a stranger to the people because they're a maverick or, you know, not in the mainstream. So I think that's why he chose the title.

Yeah!

Well I knew Andy but Andy was more aware of my performances and records, you know. I don't know how much he was.... I think Andy knew what I was doing because Robert Mapplethorpe and I worked very closely together and he knew Robert’s work and we knew Andy. But I think Andy knew me more for my records than he did for my other work.

Is it a photograph of a cross in front of a mirror?

Robert is Robert Mapplethorpe and Robert.... that cross belonged to Robert and before he died of aids he gave me the cross. Robert photographed it a lot and it's in a couple of his famous photographs. So I was trying to photograph his cross in a different way than he so I photographed it in front of a mirror. I was actually just exploring composition. That's the genesis of that picture.

Yes, thank you.

Yes, one is like... I did many of them and I did a series of small ones and the one that's like a birthday cake. I was working with this image of the remains of the South Tower that looks also like the Tower of Babel and the way it has tiers or levels, like a wedding cake, you know. I don't know if they make cakes like that in Italy for weddings but in America they have these cakes that go on... Are like little towers and I was working on it and I was looking at it and I just wrote down, coz I often write on my drawings. I felt like this image, I had worked on it for so long or thought about it for so long it was starting to look like a cake.... Like a cake to me but it's just more of an observation and the other one probably relates to... I again, was writing little poems on these. I was thinking as I was working on one of these towers. One of the hijackers was a young man who was about to be married. I was thinking about his fiancee. I was thinking of this poor girl who lost her husband. Everyone talks about the victims of september 11. Well, the hijackers also lost their lives and I was thinking they're human beings too and they had families and I was thinking that this tradegy was also a tradegy for this girl. Who thinks about her? Everyone talks about the terrible american losses or the families of the americans, but I thought here's this young girl, you know, living in Lebanon, I believe, who lost her husband-to-be.

And you know that's a terrible tradegy. You know a young girl who thinks her whole life is about to begin and it's...you know, everything is taken away from her. It was made with her in mind because when I doing work, iI like to think of everybody. I always think of all the families. I always think of, again, all of the, I think even, hijackers who all died all had parents, or sisters and brothers, or wives or friends who are also grieving and these people should be remembered, as well.

Well, it's because a lot of people, they don't think that way and I think...I always...I think of these people right away because they deserve also...I mean their loss is just as tragic.

exactly.

Well sometimes there's a few of them that took months and there's a few of them that took only a few minutes. Some of them are silkscreens. So it took a while to make the silkscreen and to think about it but some of the work takes a lot of thought and the actual process is short. Other things, there's one tower that's very large, like four feet and it's all done with handwriting from the scene Gospel of peace and that took me almost a year. But then there are others that are pulled right off of the silkscreen that might have taken a few minutes. Each piece is unique, in that some are very fast and some take a lot of thought, contemplation and labor. So in the end it doesn't really matter as long as in the end the image is authentic and hopefully has merit, you know, how much time one puts in it because a lot of the time is just in thinking, studying, contemplating, praying, whatever one puts into their work.

Oh, when I was a young girl, he was my favorite painter and I read everything about him and loved his work. I still love his work. learning about Modigliani also taught me about the Sienese painters and the painters like Simone Martini and Giotto. I liked Modigliani so much that I wanted to study who he liked. so in learning about him as a young girl I learned quite a bit about certain italian painters that I wouldn't have known and especially Simone Martini, if I'm saying his name right...

A very beautiful painter that I wouldn't have known about had I not studied Modigliani. there is probably going to be....I know that he was a big influence on me and it's often, you know, sometimes especially.... a lot of people don't even realize that or notice that but in some sketches, especially older sketches, if one understands that, one can see a lot of influence of him, an influence of Picasso, an influence of Willem de Kooning. I mean I studied and continue to study art all my life and look at a lot of paintings and study them and read a lot of art history so my work does have... comes from a knowledge of studying art history.

Well, i think that the President, the present administration, does not have the humility nor intelligence or scope to understand the complexities of other cultures. They just don't. George Bush does not understand other cultures. He doesn't even know that he doesn't understand. So I think that already people are asking a lot of questions in America especially about were there really these weapons of mass destruction. I think that things will turn on President Bush and I think that the american people will start asking more questions than they did a year ago. The september 11th tragedy was very, very hard on americans because America is a young country and we haven't experienced all of the tragedy and horrors of war that Europe has and so America doesn't really understand all of these things and it was such a shock that I think that a lot of people were very slow to comprehend the lack of wisdom in George Bush's retaliations. I think that they'll learn. I think more and more...the one thing that's happening is there's becoming a greater awareness of the middle east situation in schools. They're teaching it in schools. Young people are learning more and more so hopefully people will be more evolved in the future but it's a very painful situation right now. Especially for those, like myself, who were opposed to the strike on Iraq.

Well, I've seen the work that they do and I appreciate that they do it. I don't compare myself to them because painting and art was always my first vocation and I wouldn't.... Bob Dylan.... I wouldn't compare myself as a songwriter to Bob Dylan because he is much.... he has such a huge body of work and that has been his essential vocation. So I think it's probably different. We're working from a different place. I think I'm working from a more traditional place because my work comes out of a desire to be an artist and from studying art history and working with other artists, like Robert Mapplethorpe. So it's just... I believe that Im in a more... I'm just more traditional.

In terms of what an artist is persuing.

Obviously I didn't like working 9 to 5 but I came from a lower middle class family. My mother and father both worked. My father worked in a factory and my mother was a waitress. We were taught from an early age to fend for ourselves and I had to start working when I was 16, also in a factory and then, you know, in a bookstore or whatever I did, but I had to get a job and I felt that that had nothing to do with... I felt no compromise as an artist because I had to make a living. Some artists feel like that's a compromise and they're not going to work but then they'll often depend on other people or maybe they'll starve to death but I didn't want to starve and because I was raised with a work ethic it didn't... even though I didn't always like it, it didn't make me feel i was less of an artist because I had a job. I think that each person has to chose, but I think that what's important that people understand because you have a job or because you have children or you know.... lifestyle does not make you an artist. It might be part of being an artist but it doesn't make you an artist. Only having a calling, whether from God or from within, where ever your calling is from. That makes... and doing the work makes you an artist. Not the way.... Anybody can live in a Bohemian way but that doesn't make them an artist. So I think a lot of people confuse the two. Just like rock and roll. You know, taking drugs and doing this and that doesn't make you a musician. People get very... They get too enchanted by lifestyle. A lifestyle can be fun or interesting or exciting, but it is not the work. In the end it's always the work that makes a person a musician or an artist or whatever they chose.

oh, thank you

Well it can always be relearned. There is always hope for the future. That's what i believe.

yes.

Well, the record...

Oh, thank you! Well if you liked 'gung ho' you'll love this coz it's better than 'gung ho'.

It's moving. We produced the record ourselves. It is the same band. The songs, they have a lot of different spirit in them. There's songs, you know, ranging from... My mother died... I wrote a song for my mother. There's a song for my daughter, who's 16. There's a song for Gandhi, a very long song that also calls the people to unify and there's a very long piece called 'Radio Baghdad' which addresses the Iraqi strike and there's... You know it's a wide range of songs from very beautiful to, I think, very strong statements. I think it's, in scope, I would say it's more similar to 'gung ho'. It's just i feel that's it's... just even better.

Well, I'm sure you'll hear it very soon because they're going to start getting press copies very soon and I'm very proud of it. The sound is great and I think that all the music and the different... Ithink that I could absolutely say, by talking to you and seeing where your mind goes, and if you like 'gung ho' you're really going to like it. I promise you.

I have a title but it's not released yet. I can tell you privately, if you'd like to know.

The title is.... I just didn't want it in the papers yet because it's not released but the title is after a little song that's a spiritual that a singer named Marie Anderson used to sing in the '30's and she was a well known american spiritual and gospel singer and it's called 'trampin' and the reason, it's like, you know, I'm trampin'. I chose it because we've come out of such a long, you know, a lot of protesting, and a lot of marching and things and it's like trampin' really gives one the sense that one is just forging ahead and with a certain amount of burden but keeps walking on. It's a very pretty little song and my daughter, who is 16, has her piano debut on the song so it's very nice.

oh, thank you.

Well, i think that the thing that... Two things that I hope for. One is, especially when I'm getting tired, is energy. You know they bring their energy but they bring an open mind and what I'm very happy about is more and more young people are coming to our shows and I think they're seeking some answers or seeking someone to communicate with them and what I really hope for from an audience is just that we really communicate with one another. These nights that we perform are for lots of reasons: to have fun, to have some positive outlook, to also to let off steam if we're angry about things. I mean rock and roll to me has always been a forum for everything from fun to revolution so I try to...you know, I'd like people to come to the shows, open for things and I want to feel their energy. I think that each performance depends as much on the people as it does on us and our shows are different every night. We play different songs. we do different improvisations. The people are different. The cities are different and each place we go, some of the atmosphere of the city, the energy of the people, all of these things create the show or create the night.

Oh my gosh.

But that was good. It needed to be. What I was trying to do that night, in saying goodbye, I was saying, you know, all this belongs to you. Rock and roll belongs to the people and the people should decide the way that rock and roll is evolved. Not businesses, not rich people, not rich rock stars. I mean it should really be decided by the people. So that is what our message was.

That I am...and you're still with me!

Great and don't forget to say hello.