<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Music is about the only thing left that people don&amp;#039;t fight over. People couldn&amp;#039;t understand why my mama would have this blind kid out doing things like cutting wood for the fire. But her thing was: He may be blind, but he ain&amp;#039;t stupid. I am my own engineer. I remember one night we did a thing with Duke Ellington. He was on an oxygen tank until they called him to come out onstage. But he went out there and you&amp;#039;d never have known there was anything wrong with the man. That&amp;#039;s what music can do. If you&amp;#039;re sad, you can go home and play some records and make yourself feel better. If you&amp;#039;re in the hospital and you&amp;#039;re sick, music can be soothing. I know I&amp;#039;m gonna get shot down for this, but I think music is the greatest art form ever, bar none. I know that people who are into movies or into sculpture or writing or whatever are gonna say, &amp;quot;Ray, you must done lost your brain.&amp;quot; And they probably right. But I still think that music is the greatest art form ever. They say war has a purpose, but I&amp;#039;m not sure I agree. I&amp;#039;ve always thought that people want you to be one of two things: They either want you to be a clone -- meaning just like them -- or they want you to be their footstool, so they can control you and tell you what to do. Sighted people sometimes forget that blind people have a mind.  I don&amp;#039;t analyze myself. I just do what I do. You better live every day like it&amp;#039;s your last day, &amp;#039;cause one day you&amp;#039;re gonna be right. I&amp;#039;m a firm believer in God himself, but that&amp;#039;s as far as I can go. I&amp;#039;m not any denomination. I&amp;#039;m not Catholic or Presbyterian or Baptist or Methodist or Jewish or Muslim. I&amp;#039;m none of those things. And I&amp;#039;m sure that&amp;#039;s just fine with God. I did drugs because it was my pleasure. Nowadays they say you need to get a special chip to put in the TV so the kids can&amp;#039;t watch this and that. In my day, we didn&amp;#039;t need that. My mom was the chip. End of story. The piano is the foundation, and that&amp;#039;s it. All my kids know me. Addiction can be very, very bad. But addiction in itself isn&amp;#039;t bad; it&amp;#039;s a question of what you&amp;#039;re addicted to. That&amp;#039;s where the chickens come home to roost. You can be addicted to good habits, you know what I mean? You can be addicted to your woman. Addiction in itself is kind of like money. It ain&amp;#039;t bad or good. It&amp;#039;s what you do with it. When you write a good song, it will be good even if it&amp;#039;s sung by somebody with a bad voice. We always gonna have racism.  With singing, the name of the game is to make yourself believable. When somebody hears you sing a song and they say, &amp;quot;Oh, that must have happened to him,&amp;quot; that&amp;#039;s when you know you&amp;#039;re transmitting. It&amp;#039;s like being a good actor. You make people feel things, emotions and whatnot. But you gotta start with yourself. You got to feel it yourself. If you don&amp;#039;t feel it, how do you expect someone else to? I don&amp;#039;t remember much about what it was like to see. The main thing I remember is my mom, how she looked. And I remember colors. I&amp;#039;ve always been the kind of person who, if there&amp;#039;s anything that can kill me, I want to know something about it. People say: &amp;quot;Ray, you a genius, Ray, you a cornerstone, Ray, you this and you that.&amp;quot; Those are nice accolades, and I certainly appreciate it when people think well of my music and what I&amp;#039;ve tried to do with it. But in my heart, I mean...I don&amp;#039;t kid myself. I know I&amp;#039;m not a genius. A genius is somebody like Art Tatum or Charlie Parker. I don&amp;#039;t come close to those guys. I just happen to be a guy that can do a lot of little things and do &amp;#039;em well. It would be a real bitch if I ever lost my hearing. I know I couldn&amp;#039;t be no Helen Keller. That would be worse than death. Vision is something that you have in your mind.  This is a girl&amp;#039;s bike, man. Why would I be riding a girl&amp;#039;s bike? You didn&amp;#039;t think I was gonna notice that, right? You guys are trying to sucker a blind man! Originally published in the August 2003 issue "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a763/esq0803-aug-wil/>