I do still have dips of confidence or [can think] everything I do is rubbish.

I had the idea to do an anthology about instrument-making.

There's a sense of trajectories that are extraordinary about a life like this. You can reconnect with people and go back to playing with them after years and years of not even knowing if they're alive.

I'd just written the book Ocean Of Sound, and this terrible thing happened in my life: my wife committed suicide. I was a single parent because of that; I was completely shattered. I had a book that I'd just finished that had been produced through a really, really terrible period, but I had managed to finish it.

Sound: always in a state of emergence or decay

One of the nicest things is that I still get, very ambiguously, people saying to me, "Oh, I'm just reading your book." And I say, "Which one, for God's sake, I've done six now!" "Oceans of Sound".

I had ideas about music and sound and listening and time and so on that I wanted to pursue as an individual, and by doing that book, Brian [Eno] opened the door, and he decided to do a record based loosely on the book.