Tell us about how being diagnosed with Lupus changed you life and your writing?
SG: I was diagnosed in 2004, it was actually the end of my sophomore year in college, it kind of made me get a new perspective on life. Prior to that I used to live my life for everyone else, it was like I was on a quest to prove to everybody else that I was definitely amazing. (We both get a laugh off that) I was involved in so much, wearing myself down, I wouldn’t listen to my body at all, when I was diagnosed, I had symptoms for about a year before I was even diagnosed. I ignored the symptoms for about a year, I had joint pain, I would wake up achy, I remember one day it was so bad I had to get my roommate to help me put on my bag. I blew it all off; my brain just ignored it because I would say nothing was wrong with me. When I was diagnosed it was actually very reliving at first because you want to know what’s wrong with you, and it also put a lot of things in perspective and made me look at life and realize how important life is. I’m healthy, I’m fine praise God that I’m walking, and I know people at age 31 that had to have hip replacements or even seizures. I’m fine and I have to cherish that and make sure everyone around me cherishes this as well. So what it made me start doing was look at this (poetry) even more as a career even harder, because me sitting here trying to work for corporate America is not working for me if it’s not my calling. At the end of the day, God forbid anything happens to me, I don’t want to have any regrets, I don’t want to say “why wasn’t I on stage, why wasn’t I sharing my gift?” So I said “Why not?” I’m sitting here trying to build money that doesn’t go to the grave with me. I looked at it like a wake up call If I don’t take this seriously, It’s going to be taken away from you.
You have many achievements under your belt, HBO Def Poetry Jam, to the Q-tip Video appearance in his video "ManWomanBoogie" to your countless on stage and off stage accomplishments. How does one get to the point you are now? In other words what advice would you give to an inspiring spoken word artist who wants to excel as you have?
SG: The Best advice I can give is work ethic, you have to study your craft, If you want to be a poet you have to be dedicated to your craft like it’s a business because it is. You have to respect the fact that it is a business because they’re a lot of talented people out there who go no where because they didn’t respect the fact that it is a business. You have to promote yourself while I know this isn’t easy, one of the things I take pride in is that I have no management, I do all of this by myself, I minored in business management and majored in the communications and we did all of that stuff Public Relations and advertising. It really is all about working on your craft and keeping your business on point.
What else can we expect from you in the Divine 09 and can we expect you to grace the Lyricist Chronicles with you talent?
SG: 09 is going to be a great year I’m already speaking it into existence, I’m working on a new album that should be out by the end of the year. I’m going to be doing a lot more singing; I’m playing with a bunch of different sounds. Still Touring and doing a lot of different projects this year. Definitely if it works with my schedule I’m there we will talk.
Checkout her myspace- http://www.myspace.com/shanelleg
Her twitter- http://twitter.com/shanelleg
0 comments:
Post a Comment