There is no guiding principle, because the work that is created in collaborations should be created from its own principles.

Musicians always want to sacrifice our creativity to get involved in environmental issues or political activism of some sort - to reduce it to something more populist in terms of sing-alongs or guitar songs with a message.

Our individual consciousness is actually part of a larger system. There are many levels of consciousness, and the creativity used in composing the music comes from another level that is not purely personal.

Who approaches collaboration with agenda in terms of content? The agenda is only in terms of process, which is generosity, listening, careful thinking.

The most appealing part is the feeling of learning something true - the pleasure of a truth. For me, that's mostly found in philosophical literature at the moment.

In a way, composing on the melodic level is an expression of a melodic truth, almost like a geometric truth. If it has clarity, other people will recognize it. There's no way of isolating it in a gallery on a white wall and saying, "This is a work of art. This is a mathematical proof."

There is some music that's truly dark, in that it's dark in terms of hopeless. But then again, the act of hope is just making the work of art.