I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders.
Quite often, and in fact more often, I would say, I’m struggling all the way through to think, “What is it I like about this? What is the personality of this thing I’m hearing that I like so much?”
The muscles are there simply to serve the head. But that isn’t how traditional players work at all; musicians know that their muscles have a lot of stuff going on as well. They’re using their whole body to make music, in fact.
So, I try to make signs, graphically and visually, to say to people “Okay, this is this department of my work and this is this other department of my work.” And of course I’m very pleased if people like all of them, but I don’t want them to feel deceived at any point.
Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.
If you think of the way a composer or say a pop arranger works – he has an idea and he writes it down, so there’s one transmission loss. Then he gives the score to a group of musicians who interpret that, so there’s another transmission loss.
I can see the use and value of religion, just as I can see the use of mud wrestling, yoga, astronomy and sadomasochism. but I reject the idea that you can’t be a deep human being without it or any of them.
