When I tried to draw near, you dissolved into air before my lips could touch you. . .
Do we have anything in music that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away?
Any professional knows that the flute and the piano is a boring combination. All you've got to arrive at is a kind of typical gestural crap, right? You might agree, though you wouldn't call it gestural crap
We do not hear what we hear. . . , only what we remember.
To me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free as a human being might be free. That was my idea about sound. It still is, that they should breathe. . . not to be used for the vested interest of an idea. I feel that music should have no vested interests, that you shouldn't know how it's made, that you shouldn't know if there's a system, that you shouldn't know anything about it. . . except that it's some kind of life force that to some degree really changes your life. . . if you're into it.
Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange "abnormal" events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries.
The tragedy of music is that it begins with perfection.
Choosing to be miserable is an option, but not one I recommend.
To be laughed at is no great hardship to me. I can delight in scoffs and jeers. Caricatures, lampoons, and slanders are my glory. But that you should turn from your own mercy, this is my sorrow. Spit on me, but, oh, repent! Laugh at me, but, oh, believe in my Master! Make my body as the dirt of the streets, but damn not your own souls!
There were some things I was going and doing in Europe a little bit. Some festivals that brought me over. That was good. Some touring I did over there. But there was nothing major [from 22 to 29].
As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them.