Yes, exactly. The collective isn’t active anymore, but at the time, as black female artists, and also as students, we didn’t feel particularly acknowledged or seen as significant. So we thought, if we see each other, everyone else will be forced to see us, too. I felt so proud to be a part of something like that, and seeing the results that came from it.

I am not a nationalist in any way, and I hate flag waving, and I don’t think much good has come out of nationalism. I am proud of Scandinavia in the sense that we have actually managed to create a very tolerant and human society, which is very livable. They are of course deconstructing it and privatizing everything now, but there has been some achievement up there, in that cold north.

I’m the most proud when I get something from cities, or people. At first I was against awards, you know. I would always say, “This is so fake. The people who vote on this stuff, they never listen to the music.” But for me it’s when I received awards or something from the city. Just to go to somebody’s house and eat. Or people come and say, “We spent our anniversary checking you out,” or “We were making love to one of your records, and we had a child!” See that kind of stuff makes me feel good. Like you get a key to the city and the people are really into it. Not just, “Oh, let’s give him the key to the city because he got some publicity.” It will be some people you knew, and you were there at their school, and you worked in the community.

The things I'm most proud about at Apple is where the technical and the humanistic came together, as it did in publishing for example. The Macintosh basically revolutionized publishing and printing. The typographic artistry coupled with the technical understanding and excellence to implement that electronically--those two things came together and empowered people to use the computer without having to understand arcane computer commands. It was the combination of those two things that I'm the most proud of.

Oh, yes, absolutely. I have two children, and often I think about them and how when I’m gone, they will be here listening to an old CD of mine, thinking, “At least I can I can hear her voice.” I think this is very charming. It’s very nice. And then, of course, I also think about the other generations of opera singers coming behind me… It’s so important that they can have a real testimony of how it was in our ears. I think that what stands the test of time is really the memory of people hearing us singing somewhere.