1. Sena, how did it all begin with you and the music?
2. Who influenced you the most as a musician?
3. What made you transform from an Actress to a Poet and Spoken Word Performer to a Songwriter and Singer?
4. Is there a difference between writing poetry and writing songs?
5. What do you like the most, acting, writing Poetry or writing Songs and Sing?
6. How do you manage all your tasks? You also create Fashion, a whole other business, how much can you accomplish altogether?
7. Speaking about dreams, what are you up to, any plans?

1. Sena, how did it all begin with you and the music?

I quote a musician who said "the first instrument I played was myself" - I could not have said that better; I grew up with all kind of music in a very musical house, my mother used to be a dancer, a tap and show dancer, she danced with me around in the house to the sounds of Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Junior, Duke Ellington, told me many stories about them. When she was a young woman during Hitler all this music was forbidden and called "abnormal". You could go to jail for listening to the "enemy"; my mother told me that she was hooked to the "abnormal arts" she listened to the American jazz radio under her bed sheets; many years later, when I was about four years she took me to her ballet training classes, and her demanding teacher, Miss Godlewsky, allowed me to jump around between them, it was fun and I was always in rhythm, I did not understand why the grownups made such a big fuss about it when I had to hit a beat on a triangle in ballet class, for me it was as normal as my heart beat, so very soon I was on stage dancing solos in midst of grown-ups; my grandmother was a soubrette , and she played a sweet piano and sang songs for me , I was intrigued by her voice and sang with her, but later, in school, I became extremely shy and blushed when I had to sing in front of the other children, because they all sang very loud, in my ears very insensitive, they were bawling like on a soccer field, very much out of key, and the teachers did not correct them, the teachers sounded not much better, I could not sing with them, I had a frog in my throat; I also was not into the songs they taught us. Imagine, I grew up in Bavaria, the rhythms were so awkward, it was scary, some reminded on military marches, and the lyrics and rhymes were humiliating, as if we children were idiots. I just could not get into it. I was used to other music...

At home I was hitting on everything in my family's kitchen, with wooden spoons and forks and daydreamed to be a drummer; I also spent hours in front of a mirror holding grandma's hairbrush as a microphone.

My father was a lawyer, but in his heart he was a classical concert pianist, - as a young man he played the organ (with foot pedals) in church, and my mother said that his playing was what made her fall in love with him forever. One Sunday the priest fired him because my father used to play these long introductions and the crowd came more to listen to him than to the speeches of the priest- ; when I was little, I was sitting hours and hours under his grand piano, listening to Bach, Schubert, Brahms, Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, and when my father could not get a certain passage right he screamed and cursed himself and banged on the piano -that was pretty scary , and he started all over and I knew, in this furious mood it could not work... and then father tried to teach me the piano, but he was very impatient and I was scared when he screamed at me, because the way how he tried to teach me was very mathematical and I opposed that, so it was more or less a disaster and mostly ended with him screaming at me and tears on my side.

But it got worse: my father knew about my natural musicality and he wanted me to study the piano, so he decided to find a teacher more patient than he was.

In our neighborhood - a little outside of Munich- lived an elderly lady , in my eyes an old maid, a spinster, and why the heck my parents decided to chose her as my piano teacher, I have no clue. It was probably because I could walk there on my own, it was convenient for them, I think, maybe they did not know any better -at least I hope so -. My piano lessons were like out of a Roman Polanski Movie. Her name was Else Funk. Believe me, this Lady was everything else but funky, her abilities had nothing in common with the music I was used to, she tried to make me play Bavarian folk songs, and you can imagine it was a disaster. I did not want to practice. I hated these songs. There was no recognizable rhythm, nothing was grooving, they were straight like a march, the lyrics were unbearable and this elderly lady in her grayish clothes was an eye and ear sore, my ears just shut down, and there was nothing I could do about it; strangely enough that I never had the courage to tell my father immediately how much I hated it, instead of that I invented incidents that distracted her from teaching. Mostly I came too late and had always some good stories to tell that made her laugh and distracted Else Funk from her miserable life. She was taking care of her old mother who was nuts and needed to be supervised like a baby. For me this was interesting and creepy, I had never before seen somebody old who was out of his mind. I always thought age is wisdom, as my grandfather or both of my grandmothers ...

Once I came to class with a big bag full of pennies my friends and me had collected in the streets by selling old used postcards of our families (another scandal the whole neighborhood knew about) and "accidentally" turned the bag over so that I had to re-collect the pennies which took the whole hour, the pennies had spread out all over and I had to crawl under the piano and in every corner ... sometimes I got Miss Funk to play some of the songs my grandma used to sing, that was a little better, because she really could play quite nice, still, 't was far from what I wanted, but I was always astonished that Miss Funk did not realize that I never came prepared, I swindled myself through the lessons, played by ear and did not even learn to read notes properly, I just knew when they were on the upper line they were higher notes. One afternoon while I played some insignificant tunes that tortured me, Else Funk abruptly stood up mumbling, panic in her eyes, and ran into the garden where her old mother had climbed on a very shaky wooden ladder trying to fling wet laundry over a working electro cord. Else Funk ran into the garden screaming with a very high pitched voice" no, mother stop it, stop it, mother" - I had never seen her run, neither scream, it was an amazing spectacle, grey socks sliding down her ankles revealing very white flesh, but before she reached there, the old lady of the old lady got electrified and fell to the ground and that was the end of my piano lessons. The old lady survived without even a broken bone, got more crazy than ever before, Miss Funk had to supervise her nonstop, got money from some insurance and did not need to teach any rebellious neighbors children any more, and I was out of the game without the necessity of ruining her reputation ... now she is long gone and from the other world, bless her heart, she probably nods and pads my head as she always did when I managed to play something ...

I then joked around on father's grand piano, on my own, not really serious though, and when I became a teenager I had other things in mind, never found a piano teacher that I could admire, it was just not the way I had it in my inner picture, so one day I stopped and put music into the back of my mind, at a treasured place, after a while not even remembering that I was waiting for something that would open that door again.

Years passed by. I was a wild child. A writer,a storyteller. That was easy and soothing. I needed nothing but my imagination and observation for everything around me, and nobody could teach me bulls*** or criticize me ...

Words got me through, in school, in University, everywhere; I could easily convince people with my words, and I loved it.

But Music always was my first love, my deep love, my secret, buried deep inside.

Strangely enough, wherever I went during these musical silent times, over all these years musicians from all over the world were attracted towards me. When I was sixteen I met this Japanese Pop Star in Paris, Katsumi Takahashi. He was a member of the band "Tigers". Actually we met in Switzerland, and by chance went both to Paris, where he played "Claude" in the French version of "Hair" and he took me in a studio where he was recording some new tracks for his Solo CD and they made me play a little keyboard, it was exciting and everybody including his manager was stunned, but I had to go back to school in Munich and Katsumi went back to Japan, it was a painful goodbye and, well, not meant to be. Half a year later, when I started inventing my own clothes, a photo of me and my laced "behind" got into "Stern" Magazine and one day the manager of a famous singer called me in my parent's house. He invited me into the private music studio to meet "the man", and as I was curious I went there. I did not like his music very much, for my taste too neat and clean and very German. Couldn't deal with these rhythms...but I was eager to see his studio... I was aware that the guy was interested in 17 year old girls (or in my "booty") and I was aware that he was married and had two children. Everybody knew that. My mother told me to call her if anything was strange; she knew where I was and would have ripped the guy's balls off. When I arrived at the studio, the "superstar" opened the door in a morning gown over some slacks and an half open shirt, and invited me to sit on a brown corduroy couch that had seen better days, in fact the corduroy couch looked as if it had several "sporting" spots on it, I was shocked, but did not yet mention it. The "superstar" sat down on his white grand piano and played his most famous tunes with half closed eyes, and I thought him a desperate idiot. One song was "seventeen years and blond hair", unbelievable, the guy wanted to impress me! Me, a young girl that had not yet accomplished anything, I could not get it, the man was famous and behaved as if he needed to prove something, it did not make any sense, he did not even talk to me as a human being, he played his stupid tunes and thought I would open my legs....no sir, not for such a bad sentimental kitsch music.... Not for such a weak guy who could have been my uncle, I think I got very blunt after he sat down next to me and wanted to grab my knee, I asked him some heavy duty questions he probably never before had heard from the mouth of a young woman... I do not even remember how I left, but I mentioned his sticky couch , and his problem to grow old in dignity and - strangely enough - he called me several times after different concerts he had all over the place in Europe and he sent me dozens of dark red roses as if that could have changed my mind...