Jaden Smith
Jaden and Willow Smith, children of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, are raising eyebrows after giving a strange interview with The New York Times’ T magazine.
Jaden, 16, and Willow, 14, have been in the public eye their entire lives, and both have successfully released music – Willow’s “Whip My Hair” went platinum before she turned 13, and Jaden was featured on Justin Bieber’s “Never Say Never” single. They are currently promoting the release of Jaden’s newest EP, Cool Tapes Vol. 2, which is available for free via Jaden’s iTunes App, ‘Jaden Experience,’ and Willow’s new EP 3.
In the interview, Jaden and Willow speak about their feelings on art, the meaning of life and “Prana Energy,” providing critics with plenty of strangely philosophical quotes.
Willow: I mean, time for me, I can make it go slow or fast, however I please, and that’s how I know it doesn’t exist.
Jaden: It’s proven that how time moves for you depends on where you are in the universe. It’s relative to beings and other places. But on the level of being here on earth, if you are aware in a moment, one second can last a year. And if you are unaware, your whole childhood, your whole life can pass by in six seconds. But it’s also such a thing that you can get lost in.
Willow: Because Living.
Jaden: Right, because you have to live. There’s a theoretical physicist inside all of our minds, and you can talk and talk, but it’s living.
The reporter who conducted the interview, Su Wu, asked the famous siblings about their work and how their music has evolved over time. Willow said that her artistry has improved as she learned to care less about what people think and less about the thoughts in her head.
Jaden: Because your mind has a duality to it. So when one thought goes into your mind, it’s not just one thought, it has to bounce off both hemispheres of the brain. When you’re thinking about something happy, you’re thinking about something sad. When you think about an apple, you also think about the opposite of an apple. It’s a tool for understanding mathematics and things with two separate realities. But for creativity: That comes from a place of oneness. That’s not duality consciousness. And you can’t listen to your mind in those times – it’ll tell you what you think and also what other people think.
Willow: And then you think about what you think, which is very dangerous.
Both Jaden and Willow insist that they are honest in everything they do, going so far as to say that their music is not their career, but a part of them.
“That’s another thing: What’s your job, what’s your career? Nah, I am. I’m going to imprint myself on everything in this world,” Jaden declared.
They also revealed that they freestyle in the studio and never go into a recording session with a song already planned out. As for what kind of music they want to be making, Jaden revealed that he just wants to “make music that we think is cool.”
“We don’t think a lot of music out there is that cool. So we make our own music. We don’t have any songs that we like to listen to on the P.C.H. by any other artist, you know?” Jaden explained.
Willow then added that she had been making her own entertainment since she was a little girl, ditching literature for her own writing: “That’s what I do with novels. There’s no novels that I like to read so I write my own novels, and then I read them again, and it’s the best thing.”
Some of the oddest moments in the interview came when the Smith children were asked about their take on breathing, life and education.
Willow: Breathing is meditation; life is meditation. You have to breathe in order to live, so breathing is how you get in touch with the sacred space of your heart.
Jaden: When babies are born, their soft spots bump: It has, like, a heartbeat in it. That’s because energy is coming through their body, up and down.
Willow: Prana energy.
Jaden: It’s prana energy because they still breathe through their stomach. They remember. Babies remember.
Willow: When they’re in the stomach, they’re so aware, putting all their bones together, putting all their ligaments together. But they’re shocked by this harsh world.
Following their discussion of prana energy, a concept used in yoga, Jaden and Willow condemned traditional schooling.
Jaden: Here’s the deal: School is not authentic because it ends. It’s not true, it’s not real. Our learning will never end. The school that we go to every single morning, we will continue to go to.
Willow: Forever, ‘til the day that we’re in our bed.
Jaden: Kids who go to normal school are so teenagery, so angsty.
Willow: They never want to do anything, they’re so tired.
Jaden: You never learn anything in school. Think about how many car accidents happen every day. Driver’s ed? What’s up? I still haven’t been to driver’s ed because if everybody I know has been in an accident, I can’t see how driver’s ed is really helping them out.
Willow: I went to school for one year. It was the best experience but the worst experience. The best experience because I was, like, ‘Oh, now I know why kids are so depressed.’ But it was the worst experience because I was depressed.
Jaden posted a link to the interview on Twitter, writing, “I Promise We’re Not Crazy.”
The interview comes as no surprise to fans who follow Jaden and Willow on Twitter. Jaden, in particular, is known for his nonsensical tweets, a few of which are sampled below.
Meanwhile, the interview has been incessantly mocked online since its publication on Monday, Nov. 17.
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