That’s tough. At this point, with both visual art and music, I’ve done it enough where it’s very much this flow state where I’m not really thinking about any technical stuff. I’m just putting one thing down, and that leads to the next thing, and then you’re off to the races. There’s very little rationalization or any real plan, especially at the very beginning of the project. It’s literally just trying things to see where I can end up. As an album project starts shaping up, there’s a handful of songs or maybe…there’s some parameters in place, and you’re working within that.

That blank sheet of paper stage is one of the hardest stages, and one of the reasons it’s hard is because at that stage there’s nobody counting on you but yourself. Today it’s easy because we’ve got millions of customers counting on us, and thousands of investors counting on us, and thousands of employees all counting on each other. In that beginning stage it’s really just you, and you can quit any time. Nobody is going to care, so you set about doing the simple things first.

When I start a project, it’s a kind of investigation and curiosity at the beginning. I’m basically culling materials. I’m gathering. A lot of the work takes on a collage aesthetic. So I am thinking through an idea and then gathering all of the supporting documents. In some ways it’s essayistic. I’m attempting to put forth an idea or a thesis. There are assertions that are being made, and what can I use visually, whether it is 16 millimeter film from the past or things that I shoot myself, whether it’s interview that I go out and get, whether it’s me painting on film and creating some sort of abstraction that alludes to or gestures towards the assertion. It’s playtime at the beginning. It’s almost like a very active brainstorming that requires me to go out and find materials as well as make notes, as well as look at footage as well as read. It’s investigative curiosity at the beginning, this phase of questioning and garnering. And at the end it’s instinctual. It’s a sweet spot. There have been times where I’ve gone out and presented something thinking that it’s done and then brought it back. I’ve gotten audience reactions, brought it back, turned it up a little bit, and then it was done. Sometimes my finishing process requires me to see it with a large group of people.

I don’t think that is tough, because if you have an idea of something meaningful to communicate, you can move forward on that. You might not be successful in communicating what you want to communicate, but at least you have an idea of something that needs to be said, or something that you think should be said, and I think you go from there.

Well, the reason I’ve survived for this long is because any film composer that has an extended career learns to work within deadlines. The deadline becomes the motivating factor in the same way that a pro athlete can do these incredible things with two seconds left in the game. It forces them into their best mode. For film composers, the clock does get us into a higher gear.