So Bach, Beethoven, Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk, these are all people who would sort of rearrange or take riffs from people. Same thing with rock, if you look at the Rolling Stones doing a cover of Otis Redding or you know if you look at literature James Joyce is pulling fragments of text from other people.

If you don't understand the past, the future won't make much sense either.

Music, art, and literature are inseparable for me. How does "composition" evolve in a music and art context? It's a question we can never answer: it only asks for more information and generates more questions.

It's strange to think that culture is simply a matter of millions of files flying around, but we now think in terms of networks for everything.

DJ Spooky was meant to be a kind of ironic take on that. It was always meant to be kind of a criticism and critique of how downtown culture would separate genres and styles because it was ambiguous.

What I wanted to try and figure out was, okay, in contemporary 21st century life the alienation between the self and the land around you or the self and even the urban landscape. You name it.

So the physicality of that and the just the sheer lack of urban noise and machinery - just the wind, the water and your breath, you know that kind of thing - it was pure poetry and you know I treasure that.