Our culture is at this point full of people who are focused outward and are processing incoming material all the time. So you’ve got musical forms which are mixes, mash-ups, remixes, collages, processed versions, and sampling, all kinds of making of new pieces out of pre-existing materials rather than starting with some sound that you begin to hear in your imagination. I’m a little concerned about this because there’s just nothing like the imagination—being able to focus inward and listen to what your own auditory mechanism wants to hear—listening for what it wants to hear and what it would generate on its own for itself. You can do processing of the stuff coming at you ‘til the cows come home, but are you going to get something that’s really the expression of your individuality and your sensibility the same way as listening to your own inner ear? Are you going to come up with something original and authentically uniquely you?
