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.

When you sit with people and you can hear what they're hearing, that's quite interesting.

I believe that music should be grown on trees, to be plucked like a fruit without the extravagance of harvest.

Listening is active. It's like vision. It's like the idea of the eye projecting light, which I've heard is what children and infants say when they're asked to explain vision - that the eye projects light, rather than just receives it.

I love the pleasure of finding the same truth in two different places. It has a lot to do with a soul.

I don't like to treat words and sounds like objects. You have to penetrate deeply into their meaning.

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

Learning how to listen to others and how to listen to your own thoughts is the ultimate process.

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.

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

Water is the most purifying element. It's always involved in baptisms, healings, that kind of work.

In a way, all recorded music is reduced to the same level, no matter what it is. You find it in the store, you put it on and, Oh, that's not cool. That's gangsta rap. That's white supremacist punk. But in a way, the content is removed from the intention of the people that made it. That's the commercial level of music.

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.

Working with the Latin language is pretty powerful. Working with a language that is not spoken vernacularly is intense.