I wrote my sonic meditations and started using them with students. I took a bunch of UCSD students out to Joshua Tree and we did the sonic meditations on the boulders.

People's experiences are all different, and you don't know what the person experienced. They know, but you don't, so I think it's important to listen carefully to what a person has to say. And not to force them into any direction at all but simply to model what you've experienced, model it and also be what I call a Listening Presence. If you're really listening, then some of the barriers can dissolve or change.

Radio broadcasting was only 25 years old when I was born in 1932.

[Students] they did the sonic meditations, I would observe them in their ensembles, and the ensembles improved incredibly. So I knew I had something to do and something to say.

My mother brought home the accordion in 1942. I was fascinated and wanted to learn to play it. Some of my music has a relationship to dance styles - The Well and the Gentle or The Wanderer for example.

In my Deep Listening class at RPI, I always do an hour of energy exercises to start with. Then we do a listening meditation after that, after the body has been loosened up and warmed up and is ready. We do the listening. After that, there's the journaling of the experience, which they do each time throughout the semester to the point that I have them write a final paper on what they've experienced.

I felt a challenge to compose music. That's where my challenge was, for the most part.