i just experienced a revelation, an epiphany, a realization that every musical idea i’ve ever come up with is really just a variation on Ange Des Orages by Philip Glass, which I discovered at least 20 years ago, and I think that’s about as far as my composing skills have gone. It’s all right there. There’s really nothing to add to it. Every note, every pattern, every bass line, every texture, that incredible incredible organ. I think there’s always something in there that has penetrated me.

But identifying my origins has this peculiar liberation’ish quality that I don’t exactly understand. There’s probably only a handful of artists whose work i sub- or non-sub-consciously absorb… like Beckett or Kafka or Dylan or Cohen or Laurie Anderson or Olin Unferth or Joanna Newsom or de Saint-Exupery or Gertrude Stein or Warhol or Meredith Monk or the Velvet Underground or Mozart or Cage or Thomas Hardy or, once in a while, my sister.

But I think everything eventually crystallizes into Ange Des Orages, or passes it through it at one time or another. Hopefully one day before I die, I can work beyond that… but at least for now, still dwelling  in that place is OK by me.

I try to keep some critical distance, but it’s sometimes hard not to be overly under the influence.