People write me from all over the country, asking me, and sometimes even telling me, what they think a poet laureate should do. I found that immensely valuable. ↗
Going to a concert can sometimes be very difficult. It can be a long journey. There's the ticket prices. But when the music goes to the community - not the community coming to the concert - they say, 'Wow! I didn't know that this music was so amazing!' ↗
Film scores are often based on short themes, and it helps if you've got some way of developing these themes and making them sometimes last 4 minutes and sometimes last 40 seconds. One ends up doing it subconsciously. ↗
Sometimes directors will hire you and say, 'Oh, we love your work.' And then they start to tell you how to do it. I say, 'Hey, man, back off. You hired me to do it. Let me do it.' ↗
You know, Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize the interior of the United States. As Horton Foote used to say, the great Texas playwright, that a lot of people from New York don't know what goes on beyond the South Jersey Shore. ↗
