The task of creating soundtracks for my films — collaging music of other composers as well as my own — got me back into music composition. I noticed that the way I was working on the soundtracks began to resemble my old compositional processes and techniques more and more. In fact, I began to see that my approach to filmmaking was an extension of my music, not as one might expect, my work in still photography. I had done collaged tape pieces during my years as a composer, but now with images to go with the music, (or to put it in the words of a "film composer," music to go with the images) the whole process of working with sound and composing became not only more interesting to me, but also more satisfying in a general way. With each new film, I came to understand that I was thinking about each film, as a composer might, primarily in terms of rhythm, pacing, phrasing, all of which determined the editing process of each work.

Making soundtracks, as opposed to composing "stand alone" concert pieces has also opened up a broader approach to what my musical materials can be. I have not forgotten the music of those composers to which I was first attracted — Webern, Schoenberg, Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, and Feldman, to cite only a few examples. I have come to see and hear many more possibilities for a music composition approach that focuses on the interplay of what lies at the core of all music — its inexplicable power to convey undefined feelings and states of "being" — rather than just the façade of any given style or manner. I think that sound and music will never not be a part of my life. I feel fortunate that I have found my way back to it, and even more fortunate that this time around, I come to it with a new and richer understanding of what it is, and with that understanding, its unqualified importance in my life.