I was not happy as a traveller, I did not feel really at home anywhere I went, even in Spain which was the most I felt at home, I still was a foreigner. I missed Australia, and I can't tell why. It's just this is what I grew up with and this is the things I wanted to make meaning of in my life.
Richard MealeI had great difficulties learning to play initially because I could not think rhythmically properly, although it's an even-paced rhythm, I was not phrasing properly, I was too Western. It took me a while to learn to think in needed form, and the only way I could learn was just by ear.
Richard MealeI've always worked at the piano; I like to hear what I'm doing, I like the sound, to hear the actual sound. I get bored just looking at a manuscript.
Richard MealeI was composing before I realised I was a composer. It came more or less naturally. There were a couple of old ladies lived next door to me, and I frequented their house more than I did my own, because it had all those marvellous things in that that old ladies do have. And they had a piano, and I used to play around with that; they showed me how to read music and I used to play to them.
Richard MealeI was not happy as a traveller, I did not feel really at home anywhere I went, even in Spain which was the most I felt at home, I still was a foreigner. I missed Australia, and I can't tell why. It's just this is what I grew up with and this is the things I wanted to make meaning of in my life.
Richard MealeI use music as something from which I obtain some form of - I hate to use the word spiritual - guidance, an awareness of something more than the day-to-day or the petty. I am not reading Emanuel Kant to try to embark on a task of seeing if I can understand myself, what the aesthetic experience is. But I wholeheartedly believe in it, even though I think not too many do nowadays.
Richard Meale