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session 9
A …or the first house, which is, on the tri-metric plane, long sounds, recognized on the house of the circle.
M Define tri-metric plane.
A Tri-metric modeling, modeling on the plane of three to the third power. Propositional modeling.
M What does that mean in terms of a long tone?
A Starting from language music, long tone as an idea that happens in experience. Then in the house of the rectangle, long sound as the operating premise in drones, or in some…
M But by tri-metric you mean the directing of the circle?
A Yes, directing a positing, a thought or an idea through that plane, on which there are three different parameters. Finally, long sound as a statement of a continuous state involvement; and from that point, the twelve language models.
M What I notice is that, even though it's down on paper pretty clearly, this system of yours, you seem to always be tinkering with it in your head. I have this image of an inner world always in motion that you're always sort of referring to in the moment when you're talking about it. Like the other day you were talking about this level, and that level, and the other level, as though you were sort of picturing it in your mind. I don't know if all of those things you mentioned always have a strict correspondence with the paper version.
A I agree with what you're saying, but what that means for me is that my work is in continual motion. It's a model that recognizes change from a tri-centric perspective, and integrates recognition on a tri-centric level. Let me give you this information about the Ghost Trance musics.
Okay, long sounds, in the house of the circle, language musics. Long sounds as an idea, the state of drone; long sounds as a state of being; and then inside of that, going now to the house of one, the house of Shala: those transmutants as a continuous state phenomenon; Ghost Trance musics as an expression of infinity. That is, the universe/the expanding "so-called" universe equals Shala.
Let me give you three instances of Ghost Trance musics, each with three subcomponents. Number One, Ghost Trance musics as an expression of infinity: 1, spatial music mapping prototypes; 2, sustained space logics (for example, something that is meditative); 3, continuous processes.
Number two, Ghost Trance musics: 1, transtemporal mechanisms (it doesn't start, it doesn't end); 2, transtemporal mechanisms (fast, medium, and slow, at any point in time); 3, transtemporal mechanisms (use of multi-tempos, use of combination tempos, use of changing tempos).
Number three: Ghost Trance musics: 1, trans-idiomatic, which translates into trans-spiritual (male, female, and child); 2, no theme as such, but twelve multi-hierarchical identities: no theme--redemptive, transformative, and the phenomenon of hope. 3, tri-metric models: personal models, collective models, and models with special interests.
Finally, as an activist component--because I've given you three statements of Ghost Trance musics--three active components: metric processes, pulse target processes, and mutable processes. That is the model I wanted to establish for the house of one, in a system that, more and more, I've started to understand there's a triangulation between the identity of Shala, the identity of Ashmenton, and the identity of Helena. Shala's at the top in a certain period; in another period, Ashmenton or Helena is at the top.
M Sounds like a tangled hierarchy, from physics.
A Okay, then that is the hierarchy.
M Shala is the house of one?
A Yes.
M The expanding universe. So how would you describe the mechanics of Ashmenton and Joreo?
A Ashmenton would be sequential logics, starting with accented long sounds, operating polarity logic.
M But on the cosmic level, since Shala is…
A Oh, oh, I am still exploring that; I don't know that yet. I see it working in the house of one. I have twenty more compositions to go, and then I'll have house of one's bricks in place. For example, going back to, say, Composition 113, which would be a point of definition for the holistic compositions…from that point to, say, 147 for ten percussionists, or 175, that maps the castle, and 174, gradient logics: those compositions are examples of area space formal schemes that were conceived to map area space possibilities, or opportunities. The Ghost Trance musics comprise a prototype conceived to map extended area space domains. For instance, community area spaces; state area spaces; national area spaces; continental area spaces; global area spaces; and solar system area spaces; galactic area spaces--what Muhal Richard Abrams called the Tri-verse, as an area space, or…we move into what I call the imaginary spaces in my music, starting with Composition 113, which has a story that the soloist enacts, with a psychology; there's a pitch logic response for psychology; there's an area space parameter that's defined. Compositions 175 and 174 continue those ideas in an extended parameter.
M What number is your first Ghost Trance composition?
A 185.
M How many have you composed so far?
A We just did 284 and 285, so it's getting around 100, and I still have around twenty more to go, then I'll have the bricks in place?
M Do you have a fixed number of compositions you're shooting for, like 120?
A Not really, but what I wanted was…the plane of the Ghost Trance musics was conceived to fulfill a continuous state logic in all twelve houses, in terms of construction logic.
M What do these references to twelve have to do with the chromatic scale; are you talking about notes?
A No, I'm talking about the twelve language states, the twelve identity states of my system. So long sounds, accented long sounds, trills, which is ornamentation, staccato long sounds, short sounds, high sounds, low sounds, intervallic sounds, gradient sounds--on the chart.
M So you don't have a fixed number, but you just sort of know roughly. How do you know when you've finished?
A There will be three different species of Ghost Trance structures. The first is complete, it's continuous state metric pulses. Second species is metric state plus opposition; that opposition is rhythmic opposition.
M Metric state being the quarter note pattern?
A Bop-bop-bop-bop-bop [sings regular rhythm]--then du-du-du-du [sings irregular rhythm]. Third species is metric pulse into pulse velocity, that being from tempo to pulse. [sings a long sound then regular-rhythm short sounds]
M You're calling the long sound a pulse?
A It's the pulse time, moving from tempo time to target pulse time. In other words, if I just give you a cue, we'll just hold the pitch for as long as we want to hold it, with no tempo.
M But you're calling that pulse?
A Pulse space as opposed to tempo space.
M Oh, because there's something pulsating in that long held tone?
A Pulse space as a way of talking of velocity as opposed to tempo expansion; very fast tempo, very slow tempo, it's still tempo, you still have a metric pulse. Pulse velocity is just a way of talking of nonmetric logics that happen in time, but target time.
M I'm just trying to figure out how pulse works into that.
A Pulse could be point of activation.
M Like when you first hit the long tone?
A Yes. And the duration is pulse, because you're not hitting the whole note, you're not thinking in terms of whole notes, or metric values.
M But your experience of the music is that something's pulsating in the body?
A Let's go back to tempo. We have fast, slow, and medium tempos. Take away the tempo and you can still sing anything you want to sing arhythmically. I talk of the non-tempo space as a pulse space as a way to be able to model variables in that space, based on what's moving faster, what's moving slower. Also, based on the characteristics, the sonic-geometric characteristics of that movement. That is the basis of language music. The third species of Ghost Trance then becomes metric-pitch changes happening in metric time that goes into nonmetric time. And that's what I mean by pulse space. That nonmetric time is a time that can be factored as something as well.
M So it's not just a stretch where you're holding a note, it's a stretch where there's actually pulse happening? I'm still trying to get a grasp of what the pulse is in this. There are things happening…
A Things happening. A target cue happens, and anything can happen [he sings a random phrase]. It's just that there's no tempo there. we're taking out the tempo, but the improvisers are still playing, and what they're playing can still be defined in the parameter; that parameter I talk of as a pulse time-field, where targets--
M Kind of like the pulse tracks [one of his earlier musical devices].
A Kind of like the pulse tracks: target points that activate actions.
M The poetic imagery of the Ghost Trance will suggest to most people the Ghost Dance movement of Native Americans in the last century, which was a time when they were on the way out, defeated; and they went beyond their separate tribal systems and came together as a bunch of different tribes.
A It was deeper than that; they didn't have any choice. All of the culture was wiped out, genocide; each group could remember only a little bit of their experience.
M So how does this historical thing translate into your naming this body of musics Ghost Trance?
A I want to have a direct connection to the great Native American people. In fact, when I first discovered that trans-musics would be the next stage for me, it was at that point that I started to study Native American musics. I took a class at Wesleyan; they called me bear-boy Braxton in this class. They brought in the bearskin coat, I was running around the class in it.
M I can't help but think of the parallel on the personal level. In a way, it's kind of a perfect expression of a stage of life, around midlife, where, in a way, one whole world comes to an end, and you're stuck with the rest of it like a ghost. Did you ever think of it that way?
A Actually, I'm trying to figure out how to look at things at this point. I see this time cycle as a profound transition, and I'm still in the middle of it, and everything has changed in my life, from the breakup of my marriage, the separation from my children. I refer to this period in time as my exile, and I've been in it for some four years, sometime since a couple of months after the performance of Trillium R. My life would go into kind of a mystical something, so I have referred to it as my exile.
M I can't help but think of the reflection, too, on the history of Africans in America. They had to deal with the loss of their separate tribal identities and come together as one whole people too; a lot of improvisation, mixed with cloudy memories, took over the process of assimilation.
A That has been one of the secrets of American music, that much of it was based on existential, just kind of positing an idea, because you didn't have a tradition that told you you couldn't do whatever you were hearing. So it was a fresh psychology that brought in the new American musics, and that psychology, one would hope, would be part of understanding America, especially what it could mean in the third millennium. But what we're seeing instead of attempts to really understand what we're talking about, we're seeing the components of the modern era come into place, and those components, in my opinion, have axiomatic components that have very clear ideas of which individuals are going to be able to effect culture, which individuals and groups are going to have access to the possibilities of the composite forces and factors shaping change. So in many ways, I find myself that's consistent with this kind of dynamic change that America is going through right now, as we get ready for the real Third Millennium. We have a new president who comes into office with a complex set of components behind him; we have no more illusions about the Supreme Court; we have no more illusions about Democrat and Republican. Meanwhile, the culture is split profoundly, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out. The last time we had a profound split, it was the North and the South. Now we have a kind of a liberal-conservative split that's even deeper.
M Between the coasts and the middle.
A Yes [laughs]. Interesting to see how all this plays out.
M When you mention the seventh restructural cycle, you mean what took off in the '60s, basically?
A Yes.
M What occurred to me is--we were talking about traditional influences, ranging from historical Western music to people like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. We noticed in talking about the Southern strategy is that what happens is that there are these individuals who are, by your lights, part of the continuum of creative music evolution, but what happens through the Southern strategy--and maybe through the whole project of Western civilization--is that what started out as a creative music gesture, struggling, underrecognized, maybe persecuted, misunderstood--a couple of generations later is suddenly revered and yet at the same time commodified, used and manipulated. What I'm wondering, in that process, to get up as far as, say, the seventh restructural cycle, one of our themes of our talk has been that the masters of that are people who are all still on the outs; we're still in the middle of a kind of a culture war, where even though you see yourself as part of a great long continuum that includes Armstrong and Ellington and those people, you don't see yourself or your work or that of your AACM colleagues, or Cecil Taylor, or whoever is active now as having reached that point where the Southern strategy appropriates that, so that we see a Nike commercial running with a soundtrack by Braxton, or Cecil.
So it seems to me like two possible futures to keep in mind here, once we get into talking about the future of your work. If things go like they've always gone, we could end up at the year 2050, with Braxton's work enshrined at the Lincoln Center just like Duke Ellington's is now, and the whole spirit of it is somehow subverted; or we could end up at a place where at some point creative music gets the upper hand and tips the scales, so that it's no longer possible to appropriate it that way.
A And, for me, what you're describing is something that's outside what I can understand right now. In another twenty years, they're going to be able to appropriate whatever they want. We'll seen John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" on the television set being used to sell cigarettes or something. The marketplace is incredible, their ability to turn something of meaning into fluff is incredible. In fact, I remember laughing yesterday at this crazy TV commercial; it's just another stupid kind of commercial, but it got me. I found myself thinking, yes, for the people who are thinking along these lines, if they can't get you one way, they'll find another way to get you--because they're into this, and actually it's a form of creativity as well.
As far as how my work will be viewed in fifty years, I'm not even worried about that, because the music will fight for its own life, and in the end I think all of these things are cosmic. I think all I can focus on is trying to do my work and to know that, one, it was always first and foremost a personal matter. Second, it was something that I felt that I could be involved with that would also be bigger than me, so that hopefully I would be a part of something I could believe in, and add to. Finally, it's not about me, or the individual; there's a cosmic component happening. What's fascinating to me, at 55 years old, is seeing the dimensions of change, and how quickly time and space go by in a period of 25 years, where suddenly we have the opportunity to see so much change, and the various levels of manipulation that come into play. This is why I can't wait for the DuBois books, because I feel more and more that his position between Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington was a position that set up the propositions that I'm experiencing right now. As his ultimate viewpoint that African-American intellectualism, in America, anyway, is a subject that is basically irrelevant, because the information complex is not set up to include perspectives from non-Eurocentric psychologies, and especially from African Americans. I feel that before we can even get to a point where we can have a healthier intellectual discourse, that our country will have to go through another set of experiences or something; we're not there at this point. So I would not be surprised if my work experiences the fate of Frank Johnson's, and William Grant Still's and the Philadelphia school, whose work will be kicked out of the domain of relevancy at the beginning of the modern era. Suddenly it became all about creative music as a practice perceived within the marketplace's concept of New Orleans, as opposed to experiences taking place all over America. Now we see the primacy of the blues, the primacy of the rhythm in swing, used in a way that actually defeats the evolution of the music in terms of how those propositions were conceived a hundred years ago, or eighty years ago. They're taking definitions of a hundred years ago and trying to apply them to now, and kicking out anything that doesn't fit in neatly. In fact, get ready, Mike Heffley, for another period of Reconstruction.
George Bush has won. When this experience happened after Reconstruction, during the Hayes-Rutherford period, part of the deal involved cutting off the Reconstruction process, and getting the troops out of the South. So now here we are again, and on the television the pundits are talking about how George W. owes the African American community, that it has been the community most disenfranchised because of the manipulations in Florida, and that W. needs to make an effort to leave no willing heart behind--his compassionate conservatism.
M I read a statistic too that he got less of the African American vote than most Republican presidents up to now, including his father--in spite of the show of unity and diversity at the convention they held.
A Is that right? I don't blame George W., I blame the African American community. I think it's stunted, all Democrats, because we don't feel like we have anyplace else to go. But that position is not a healthy one. We're being manipulated by the liberals.
M When you were in Europe, did you get much feedback on the Ghost Trance music?
A Very positive experience. Graham Lock showed up. The people there listen to the music with a different spirit there. It was very positive; but then again, there's a small group of people in Europe who are interested in my work, and since I don't perform very much, maybe the fact that the concert was so positive were aware of the music, and of which area I'm working in. But from my perspective it was a wonderful occasion to play, to a nice reception. They write about the music with more respect and interest; in America right now they don't focus on my work at all. In fact, the machinery is gearing up for the Ken Burns 10-part, 19-hour extended work this guy is doing. And everything I read about it says it goes up to 1965 and jumps to 1985, and--well, we're not surprised by that. But in fact, that period from 1965 to 1980 was a profound period in time in America; whatever one wants to say about the AACM, it's an organization that was unique in the sense that it was a gathering of musician-composers who decided they would respond to creative music in any way they wanted to respond, and support one another. And that the musics and ideas that came out of that group would be viewed as not relevant is a tragedy. Or if it's not a tragedy, I'm surprised that it's not, because the men and women I grew up with and worked with were serious people who were totally dedicated, and functioning from the highest possible intentions, that being giving something back to the community, being the best musicians they could be, and finding something that was personal in the music. All of that now is being wiped out. The African American community is spinning, like the rest of America, from this last thirty-something days of political lawyering. It's going to be interesting to see how all these components congeal on some level as we get to the Third Millennium, and sets the stage for something like…it feels like the Reconstruction era is coming back. It already feels like the Swing era has come back. It feels like entertainment as the highest experience has come back. The psychology of the practical has come back. The cult of ethnicity and racial politics never really left, so it didn't have to come back, it's just taken a new form. And I'm basically in the same position, if not worse, as when I initially made the decision to move out in this direction. Although I have to be careful with how I say that. I've been able to have a whole life, until 55 years old, and to maintain a connection with my work, and play music.
M I want to talk about the opera project in Chicago. Before we go there, do you want to comment on anything you read in the Cecil Taylor interview about the significance of his interest in your work?
A Well, the only thing I would say is that I was surprised to hear Cecil mention my name, and it makes me happy whenever he mentions my name, because he's a great, great man, and I can only wonder what he's thinking in this period as he looks at the threshold of the Third Millennium coming in.
M Because when I first mentioned it to you, your first reaction was to say that it seemed to indicate that the scene was changing. So really what we're talking about here is maybe a sense of being on the brink of something, which is really graphically illustrated by this election stuff, and the Ken Burns film. Do you think things are coming to a head in a way that would radically change your experience of what you're doing?
A No, not really. I have come to see my work more and more in the spirit of the African griots who are outside of everything. Of late, I used the expression "navigation through form" as a way to talk about poetic intent; navigation through form as a way of making the distinction of saying that I'm not liberal or conservative; it's not jazz or classical music; but it recognizes these quadrants. So when I think about the future--Cecil mentioned in one of the articles, I think, that as a composer, it was just going to be continually frustrating, because they weren't going to let me in. Well, he could not have been more correct. I would only say on my behalf that I wanted to have a response based on my understanding of composite reality, and my own attractions, curiosities and balances. There was no way I could avoid the world of composition and extended notated music. But he's right, there's no slot for a guy with my interests, and I don't see that changing in a real sense during my lifetime. Because the central problem is that my work cannot be embraced without on some level acknowledging the thought processes and the value systems relating to how it's come into being. And we're not at a point where the culture is ready to consider information dynamics from a multitude of perspectives. So that's why I've tried to approach my work in a very definite way, and define the components and document the particulars of my experience in a way where it can be studied. Because what I wanted was to have an experience in the house of the circle; I wanted to come out of that experience and have some memory of what took place in that experience, and to extract those memories in the form of ideas, and to build a context of ideas related to that experience that would later transpose into bringing that real-time experience and bringing that idea together in a way that would be transcendent, and symbolic. So I don't see any real attempt to deal with my work in the near future. I would be happy if there would be some attempt to deal with William Grant Still's music. That would serve me just as well, if not better, because it would give young people an opportunity to understand that there's a precedent, a continuum of things happening, and that the opera of Scott Joplin, Treemonisha, is an important opera, an American opera that's very special; and it's also an opera composed by an African-American composer, with a different set of values and propositions to add to the mix, to the body of tradition. But America is not at a point to integrate all of these experiences and propositions, and the best I can hope for is that while I'm alive I can get a performance every now and then of an opera, since the operas are the hardest ones to get a performance of and document. I'd like to evolve my system to the furthest of my ability and have it there as something that can be experienced, studied, and pondered.
M You scoped out the end of the first house of the Ghost Trance music through the next twenty compositions. Earlier you told me that you had reached a certain point with your opera concept, but you still had a very definite image of where you had to go next before something about it could be realized. You said you had realized your opera complex on one level, but hadn't yet integrated it with the coordinate musics or something. Do you see this process of developing your body of work as a composer as being just continuing on the way it always has up to the end, from plateau to plateau, and that you're always going to be motivated and interested enough to hang in there even if you are beating against walls like this?
A I would like to hope so. I see creative music as equal to creative living; music and life are really both the same thing, there's no reason why one should not continue to learn and grow. Maybe it changes when you get older, in terms of the rate of how much can be done in a given time frame. But getting older also brings with it a set of experiences and perspectives that can trump out the extra energy of youth. I'd like to hope that I can continue to evolve myself and move toward a point of self-realization in my spiritual life; I would also like to hope that, as a creative person, I can also continue to evolve my music. I think living involves creative music as part of the basic responses inside of a given time perspective, or day. I think what I call music is not just acoustic sonic actualization, but the whole phenomenon and psychology of living. Finding a positive line, finding a way to evolve, finding a way to keep on going and have hope. Recognizing, or at least keeping curiosity, to value curiosity. I would say for the young people, especially the young people of America, but actually the young people of the planet: stay interested in NASA, and in space travel, and in the new things that are happening right now, because this is an incredible period of time, what these guys can do now. I mean, you know, the cell phones connected to the satellites, signals bouncing all over the place…
M This whole space program is another thing that started in the '60s that got cut off.
A Yes! We landed people on the moon, in one of the greatest moments of documented human experience, and by the next year Americans were, like, not even interested any more. We had an incredible achievement that served to kind of just, in a strange kind of way…the country was not able to integrate that experience and move forward. Then when the Soviet Union collapsed--
M And they were the first ones up there, too.
A --yeah, so then Americans thought, "we've got it made, we're the ones, we're the heroes."
M Seems like we're born into a time when the words "ahead of your time" take on some meaning. I mean if you're stuck in that place in the '60s that you are, and anybody that maybe took LSD--
A Yes.
M --time took on a new significance. You know, the whole space thing happened, and you think of Sun Ra…
A Yes.
M --but you'd think that if you can get this far, and then see how much closer you are to how much farther you could go, that it would be just like a straight shot up from there. But instead it went like this [hand makes a gesture of a winding path in the air]
A Yes.
M And yet anybody that went winding there with it has to keep that in their consciousness.
A Oh yes.
M So, I don't know. I'm thinking about how a long time ago you were talking about knowing full well that you were sort of choosing a life in the cracks, which you have indeed sort of had. It's not like nothing has happened…
A But it's been a life in the cracks.
M I think at this point the logical segue is, whether we do it now or next time, is to use that whole operation of fantasy to overcome the pessimism and realism of the situation to start kicking around the concept of the future that the concept of creative music has envisioned all along, and is yearning for, to be in a society where the dominant tenor and emotional affect of the people involved with it is not one of exile and resignation, but one of total engagement and support, and recognition.
A That's why the use of imaginary models has been very important for me. Imaginary activities that give me a chance to start thinking in terms of the opera, imaginary formations that give me a chance to start thinking in terms of micro/macro formal schemes, for continuous state logics, i.e. Ghost Trance musics; and imaginary states as a way to have specific things to compose for, as opposed to abstraction representing the optimum state of postulation. I don't agree with that. I think that abstractions, the house of the circle, is just one state, and that's why, again, the term Tri-Centric helps me to contextualize zones of propositions, decisions. The question again for me was going to be, which way to go, would I continue to think of modeling abstract syntaxes together with compositions, or would I look for something that would be greater than that. For me, the discovery of narrative structure, the discovery of holistic formulations, and the decisions that would lead into the declarative imaginary space would give me a whole new field of devices to work with in a specific kind of way.
M So when you experience a story line turning itself into music, is this just a spontaneous thing that happens because you've been involved in music for so long that you get an idea of writing a sentence about one of your characters, and all of the sudden the music just suggests something that is attached to that story line?
A Well, it depends on what piece we're talking about. If it's the opera, I go to the schematic; I make up a story based on the principle schematic subject of each opera. For compositions like 174, for ten percussionists, and 175 for four vocalists and so forth, I create an imaginary space like a castle, or a mountain, and then map different points in it. The idea being that from a tri-centric perspective--that being from the experience of imagination to the ideas that come out of that experience into real time as a third component, the house of the triangle, the realization: my conception is conceived as the same way that we talk of Disneyland: as an area space proposition/project that could have a constructive proponent like Disneyland, where the friendly experiencer, single or group tours, could have an experience in this area space, different kinds of strategies where origin experiences could happen--secondary origins, like an orchestra piece--secondary origins where a friendly experiencer comes and interacts; and genetic experiences, where the friendly experiencer takes part and puts it into some other part. So what I've been trying to do is create a state of music that could would address different kinds of formal states, real and imagined. And so for the real states, as far as an area space, I think in terms of Disneyland, as an example of real area space. I think Walt Disney was one of the great visionary Americans; Sun Ra understood that.
M But you mean the expression of it is like an opera, or imaginary world?
A A sonic amusement experience park, with twelve different lands, each land demonstrating the identity of its corresponding number in the system. Land number one is Shala land; land number two is Ashmenton land. Each land containing x amount of structures, from orchestra, large group musics, to solo musics, chamber musics. So the firendly experiencer can connect into different kinds of sonic experiences. I would also like to have this in the virtual space. The question is, who could help me build it? A virtual imaginary space where the friendly experiencer can come in and go through all these different twelve spaces and have, at this point, 400-something compositions loaded into the computer. Including secret passwords activating pitch sets; magic pitch sets; lineage pitch sets or strings; family codes.
M That's going to take some program. But it sounds technically possible.
A [laughter] Another ridiculous Braxton idea!
M But you know what I'm thinking about is…I heard this lecture on linguistics, about how when you're first learning how to read, you're whole being, as a kid, is completely devoted to the letters and words and to just struggling from word to word until you finally get a sense of the meaning; and it goes like that for several years until finally, when you get it, you're experience of reading is not dealing with letters and words or anything like that, but is rather engaged with some new world that you've got going in your head now. And in fact, the only way to subvert that experience of this new world, this fantasy world of thought, is to start paying attention to what you're doing on the lower levels of the words and the letters. So it seems to me like your process is something that has just kept going down this line, starting with the basics of musicianship. You know, anybody that masters an instrument, like the piano, doesn't know what his hands are doing anymore when he sits down to play; he's just thinking about where he wants to go with the music. Then if the name of your game is not only to do that but also to make up the languages and the techniques yourself, then what gets put down there on that base layer is something else that you made up that you're not even aware of any more.
A Yes.
M And if you looked at it, you'd be blowing it for yourself.
A Yes.
M So I'm just trying to figure out how…if this is, as I believe, the natural process of creating music, and I'm engaged with this role of presenting this information for what it really is to a general readership that needs to know it. I mean what obsesses me is we have people in this society here--you, Cecil, all these other musicians I've met and talked to about their processes, who have developed so far down the lines of their self-creative universes--who are not in the center of the society, of the culture, of the world, where by my lights, and by all rights, I think they should naturally be.
A Well, I think that might be part of this route. [more laughter]