When you spoke recently at Shoreline Community College in north Seattle, you said, "I am not a loyalist to the underground. I believe that [the art] that comes through us should be shared."

Saul: Many of us fall in love with a [music] that we had to discover because it was something that wasn't out there in the mainstream. We fall in love with underground music, but then we start loving that music not because it's good, but because it's underground. And so it's just a way of reminding myself that what I love about things is not that they're mine, and secretly mine, and other people don't have it, because I think that good things should be shared.

I'm not of the mindstate that the mainstream will always be nonsense. I think the world is changing, and I think that the nonsense is becoming more obviously connected to the idea of being "nonsense." You tell just about anybody these days that George W. Bush has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his war against terrorism, and the people start to see the irony. And so things are shifting -- consciousness is shifting -- and so I think that nonsense should be underground, that the terrible music be the music that people have to go through to crates to find.

There was a time when mainstream music was cool. James Brown, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles; all these people were mainstream and their music was amazing. It fed people's hearts, minds, and souls, and it allowed them to dance, you know? There can be a time again when mainstream music is feeding us.

There are two other quotes that I recall from Shoreline that I really liked. The first was: "When you commit your life to being a vessel as an artist, you witness magic." And the second: "Poetry lives in perspective." Would you mind explaining those?

Saul: It's simply that: perspective. The power of poetry is in one's ability to look at something in a different way. When I was at Shoreline I was talking about the film Life Is Beautiful and how it ends. The film refers to the Holocaust, a subject that we've heard a million times. But in choosing to look at it in the way the film did, all of a sudden it was like, yes, these people were being victimized; but these people were telling a story that was beyond victimization, one of healing and hope within the victimization process. There was a sense of empowerment that I had never encountered, and that is a poetic statement.

I think that part of the job of the poet is not simply to express one's feelings, but to show how we can feel a new way. I've been reading a book recently that says reality is in perception. You know, it's the old thing of the glass is half empty or the glass is half full. The poet has the opportunity to say that the glass is not a glass at all, that the glass is the ocean, or whatever. It's all perspective.

On Amethyst Rock Star you mention your daughter Saturn frequently, and you also refer to the joys and fears of fatherhood. As a father, what is your biggest fear, and what is your biggest hope?

Saul: Biggest fear and biggest hope? Huh... I don't have any fears. And I don't have any hopes. [Laughs] No... Actually, there's a Taoist saying that goes "hopes are as hollow as fear." And I don't believe in stating what my biggest fear is because maybe it gives it more power than it should have. Things will evolve as they should -- and they will.

You have two passages in the book She that, to me, exemplify both the beauty and frustration of inspiration. "You will sit in darkness / swallowed by silence / until the angel of solitude / ignites your spine"; and, "I am there / lost in a vision / unable to decipher / the fire that burns me / from the page that writes me." Do you have any specific meditation process you go through to open yourself up to your writing muse? What inspires you?

Saul: Everything and anything inspires me. Primarily, just insight into a particular matter is an inspiration, like when I'm able to think of something in a new or interesting way. As far as a particular process, it just comes about through a process of breathing. [Laughs] Just breathing. It's really simple. Sometimes I just remind myself to sit down and breathe. I try to remember that every day.

That and drinking eight glasses of water.

Saul: [Laughs] Yup, for real. That's it.

Who were your influences? Who were, and who are, your heroes?

Saul: I guess the first one was Paul Robeson. Aside from that, there's a lot of them. There's a lot of people I think have had amazing lives, and have done amazing things in their lives. Sidney Poitier is one. [Jimi] Hendrix, [John] Lennon. I list many of them in "Coded Language" -- that song is a list of heroes, basically.

You've been likened to Kahlil Gibran -- a poet you also quote in She. Do you think that's an accurate description?

Saul: Of Kahlil Gibran? No... I wouldn't think that's accurate. I think he's much more of a writer, much more spiritually in depth. I think that [being likened to Gibran] would be a graduation gift for myself -- perhaps at some point in my life to have that comparison -- but I've not yet made it there. I'll quote him every now and then, because I think he's brilliant, but I couldn't compare myself to him at all.

How do you inspire others? What advice do you have for young writers and musicians?

Saul: Write and play music. The language in which I have inspired others is primarily through just sticking to the visions that I have -- visions which others might see as naïve, or lofty, as far as what I think the mainstream world can be -- and not being afraid of the mainstream at the same time. Being unafraid to enter that world and seeing it as a place where I do not have to become tarnished or jaded in any way. In an abstract way, it's almost like standing up to the system. In an abstract way, a poetic way; not in a Che Guevara way.

Poetry is supposed to be this periphery art form, and I guess that somehow what I've been connected to work-wise has taken it out of its periphery placement and has put it more so in the mainstream -- or at least on the cusp of the mainstream. I think that I give people a bit of hope or encouragement to pursue their dreams. I think that what I represent is the idea of perhaps living your dreams, but dreams that are connected to everyone, not the materialistic kind of having a big house or a big car. The pursuit of dreams that are connected to the pursuit of one's spirit.

In the liner notes to D'Angelo's album Voodoo, you write: "There does seem to have been a lyrical evolution in hip-hop. Vivid, descriptive narratives of ghetto life seem to have come at the cost of imaginative or psycho-spiritual exploration. In other words, niggas have come up with amazing ways to talk about the same ol' shit. The problem is, when we recite the same ol' shit into microphones [...] the same ol' shit continues to manifest in our daily lives."

I'd like to turn that back around on you by asking what role does both your writing and your music play in the future of hip-hop, as well as the future of language?

Saul: I don't know, because I don't have any concern about that. See, I'm not a crusader for hip-hop, or for language, even though I deal with words. I deal with words to point at the spirit. You know what I'm saying? I'm more concerned about the evolution of humanity. And the music that I make, be it hip-hop or rock, and the language that I use, be it spoken or written, is aimed at invisible things that one can only connect to through prayer and meditation. And my concern is seeing that meditative state becoming reality in all of our lives so that we can live peacefully; not just with each other, and not just in some government standardized version of the Martin Luther King dream way, but in a way that is harmonious with the universe and that is beyond militarism.

My dreams of a better hip-hop, and what not, are only connected to the dreams of a better reality. So to that extent, I don't know what my work does to better hip-hop. In a very, very practical sense, I suppose that since so many kids are introduced to my writing in school, and that they're able to pick it up my music at the record store, that perhaps there's a young generation of MCs that are coming up that are perhaps influenced by the kind of stuff I'm doing.

Hopefully that influence won't make them imitate me, but will make them want to find their own voice before they find a microphone. The thing I eventually learned was that there is no rush. I needed to focus first on bettering myself and bettering my craft, and in doing that the microphone would reach me, and the spotlight would reach me at the right time. Someone once said, "Success is when opportunity meets preparation."

On the web:
Saul Williams (Official site)