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  • BRADLEY HOROWITZ: Hello, and welcome

  • to this Talks at Google event.

  • My name is Bradley Horowitz.

  • I'm Vice President of Streams, Photos, and Sharing

  • here at Google.

  • It's my pleasure to welcome you all for this very

  • special afternoon together.

  • How many of you got to attend yesterday's event?

  • Oh, good.

  • It looks like about half.

  • We had a tremendous amount of fun.

  • We had four world-class musicians

  • sitting up here talking, jamming,

  • talking about their craft, laughing.

  • I laughed.

  • I cried.

  • It was beautiful.

  • And more today.

  • Today we're going to have a conversation

  • between two old friends, Arturo Bejar Philip Glass.

  • And Arturo I've known for quite a long time.

  • He's a bit of a Silicon Valley institution.

  • And in fact, yesterday I learned that it was Steve Wozniak who

  • actually brought Arturo from Mexico to Silicon

  • Valley for the first time.

  • He later went on to found a team called the Paranoids at Yahoo,

  • which was the first of its kind, really,

  • in the Valley that really focused on issues of spam

  • and abuse, and he carried forward that work

  • to Facebook, where he was at for many years,

  • building the product infrastructure team there

  • and then working on issues of compassion

  • and bullying and making that a safe and comfortable place

  • for all of its users.

  • He's since moved on from Facebook

  • and is now focusing on being a father and a photographer,

  • and one of the subjects of his photography

  • is, in fact, Philip Glass.

  • Philip Glass is a world renowned composer and pianist

  • whose work spans generations.

  • He has composed over the last 25 years more than 20 operas,

  • 8 symphonies, two piano concertos,

  • and numerous soundtracks to films

  • and all the while maintains his extensive solo creations

  • on piano and organ.

  • He grew up in Baltimore, studied at Juilliard,

  • moved to Europe, where he trained with Nadia Boulanger

  • and closely worked with sitar composer Ravi Shankar.

  • When he returned to the States in the 60s,

  • he formed the Philip Glass Ensemble

  • and still performs with that group to date.

  • At almost 80, he's collaborated with folks from Paul Simon

  • to Yo-Yo Ma and presents and performs solo keyboard concerts

  • around the world.

  • In 2011, he founded the Philip Glass Center,

  • a home for artists, scientists, and conservationists

  • to collaborate and produce a culture of renewal

  • for our time.

  • So I want to invite these two friends up here

  • to have a conversation and maybe even a bit of performance.

  • Philip, Arturo, welcome.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Thank you.

  • PHILIP GLASS: Thank you, Bradley.

  • Thank you.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Thank you so much.

  • So I wanted to start, maybe, a little bit

  • seeing how I ended up here next to you.

  • When I was in college, the weirdest thing I had ever heard

  • came on the radio.

  • It was "Knee Play Number 5."

  • And I couldn't leave there.

  • I needed to go to school, and I couldn't

  • leave to go to school because I had to listen to it.

  • And then I listened to "Einstein"

  • for God knows how many times.

  • And fast-forward 20 something years.

  • And I mean, there is a little place called Carmel Valley

  • that's near Carmel-by-the-Sea, and I go into the video store,

  • and there's a flyer there that says,

  • Philip Glass presents the Days and Nights Festival.

  • And I pick it up, and I'm like, well,

  • it can't be that Philip Glass.

  • Is there another Philip Glass that's doing this?

  • And I went to the first festival,

  • and I sat down to watch this dance piece,

  • and right behind me, he was sitting there.

  • And during the break, I went up and said hello,

  • and he was very kind with attention and conversation.

  • And ever since then, I have been photographing for the festival,

  • and in the process of doing that,

  • I have seen a collaboration that is extraordinary

  • because it spans from young people-- like, from 20 to 80--

  • from Africa to Japan, across cultures, across disciplines.

  • And being able to be a part of that has been an amazing gift.

  • And so what we'll hope to talk about today

  • is a lot about that process and collaboration.

  • And I wanted to start off by asking you about your journey,

  • how you ended up in Big Sur.

  • PHILIP GLASS: I was just thinking about that.

  • The festival we have at the-- it's

  • the last week of September, Big Sur this year,

  • at the Henry Miller Library.

  • It seems to be-- it was a destination which--

  • I didn't know what it was, but it became that.

  • When I was just beginning writing music-- and then

  • shortly after that I went study at Juilliard--

  • I would spend my time practicing the piano

  • and working like everybody else, and I felt so

  • cut off from everybody because that's all we did.

  • And not just me.

  • Everybody did that.

  • And I thought, well, if this is going to be my life,

  • to be this isolated, this is not going to happen for me.

  • So I began immediately-- I was 19

  • at the time-- I began working with dancers

  • who were the same age as me.

  • And that's always a good idea for anybody

  • who wants to know, where do you start?

  • You start with people your age, and with luck, they

  • stick around for a while.

  • And I began working with theater companies, with dancers,

  • and I began immediately-- I wanted

  • to get out of the practice room, and I also

  • wanted to be able to perform.

  • And I found that dancers always knew the music.

  • Theaters often needed music.

  • And so I didn't have to create a concert

  • career at the beginning.

  • I just started playing music with other people,

  • and that just continued.

  • And then the other thing that was really interesting

  • was I was concerned very much that the music that I

  • was doing-- I guess you could say

  • it was modernistic music of a certain kind.

  • But I felt that I wanted to see, how does that

  • fit into the world that I live in, into the everyday world?

  • And I began to think of all of the social issues,

  • political issues, and by the time I was in my 30s,

  • I was writing operas about people

  • who changed the world through their ideas,

  • like a opera about Gandhi, an opera about Einstein.

  • I began using music and theater music particularly

  • as a way of addressing the issues of life,

  • of what we are living.

  • I didn't really want an abstract music, and though in many ways

  • you can hear it as abstract, music has that quality.

  • It always has the quality of-- it

  • is emotional and abstract at the same time.

  • So we'll always have that.

  • But I wanted to connect the music with the power of ideas.

  • So I got involved with scientists.

  • The other thing when I was a kid-- so I was born in '37.

  • So by 1945, '46 people began knowing who Einstein

  • was because of the atomic bomb.

  • But suddenly, this scientist became-- he was actually

  • our first science superstar.

  • Everybody knew who Einstein was.

  • And what we used to say in that time

  • was that everyone knew who Einstein

  • was but no one understood the theory of relativity.

  • They said six people in the world understood it,

  • which is-- I don't think that was an exaggeration.

  • Well, actually, I think there are many more people who

  • know it, but that was the idea.

  • But I got very interested in scientists,

  • and I began to see-- before I was at Juilliard,

  • I was at the University of Chicago,

  • and I was studying mathematics and physics,

  • and I wasn't particularly good at it.

  • I loved it, but I realized that I was never

  • going to be very good at that.

  • What I could do-- I was writing music.

  • I knew that it was going to be music.

  • I became very interested in scientists

  • and environmentalists and anybody

  • who was connected to the living, organic world that we live in,

  • and in a funny way, I became the scientist composer.

  • I've written an opera about Einstein, Galileo, Kepler,

  • Stephen Hawking.

  • I did a movie about him.

  • Just a couple years ago, Brian Greene, who is a string theory

  • physicist-- I did a piece with him.

  • So I began writing music for sciences.

  • And then, in fact, this year, one of the people

  • who's going to come at the-- the center is about music.

  • It's about dance.

  • It's about film.

  • It's about poetry.

  • All those things are in this festival this year.

  • But I have these other issues, too.

  • So someone I know has written a book called

  • "The Well-Tempered City," and it's about-- his name

  • was Jonathan Rose.

  • He does a very interesting study of cities from Ur.

  • We call that the first city.

  • He compares it to Baltimore and Dayton,

  • and he talks about the issues of what

  • a city needs to do to be successful or to survive.

  • You know, there are cities around the world that

  • have suddenly disappeared, and we don't know why.

  • They become ghost towns.

  • We think maybe the water supply disappeared,

  • or there was a disease or something.

  • But you can visit these cities.

  • So there are cities that have been successful.

  • Paris, London-- they've been around a long time.

  • We don't know what San Francisco or Los Angeles-- I

  • don't know if they've been around that long yet, but any

  • of the New World cities-- well, Mexico City.

  • My god, that's an amazing city.

  • When Cortes arrived and they saw Mexico City, at that time

  • it was in the Valley of Mexico.

  • You know this-- because he's from Mexico.

  • There were a million people living there.

  • Now at that time, we're talking about the 15th century.

  • The European cities were 30,000, 40,000.

  • London was 40, 50,000.

  • Mexico City was a million people.

  • Now they had already mastered some-- of course,

  • you know all this.

  • It was a city that was built on water,

  • and so there were-- and it's all very interesting.

  • But I got interested in all this stuff.

  • And so this year, Johnson Rose is

  • going to be giving talks about the well-tempered city.

  • And he uses the well-tempered-- from the Bach idea,

  • the well-tempered clavier.

  • It has to do about tuning, and it's

  • a subtle and extremely intriguing

  • idea about perfect tuning, about relative tuning.

  • Actually, this is relative tuning.

  • And besides that, Jonathan also plays electric bass,

  • which you know, and he's going to be playing electric bass one

  • night of the concert.

  • So I've got my scientist playing bass

  • in the orchestra, which is-- so these kinds of things that

  • interest me, where you have a meeting of cultures.

  • And here's the interesting thing, I think.

  • That people that are interested in science

  • are very often interested in music and in dance.

  • It's the same people.

  • And the other thing that I began to realize

  • is the more I knew about science,

  • I began to think of science as a kind of poetry.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Yeah, and so that's

  • one of the things I wanted to ask you about--

  • was to talk a little bit about the piece for Brian

  • Greene around the black holes.

  • Like, you take a concept around physics concepts.

  • And how do you match those to musical language?

  • PHILIP GLASS: Well, now I did the black hole-- of course,

  • everybody knows this.

  • I'll tell you anyway.

  • If you get too near a black hole, you get sucked into it,

  • and you can't get out.

  • But it has other property of-- time

  • slows down so that when you get into the black hole,

  • time is actually stopped.

  • So when I was writing this piece with-- Brian

  • would call me and say, have you got to the part

  • where the time slows down?

  • I said, yeah, I'm working on it now.

  • He said, can I come down and hear it?

  • I said OK.

  • So he came down to the studio, and I played this piece

  • where the music was very high and moving very fast,

  • and as it goes lower and lower, it gets slower and slower,

  • and finally, it just stops.

  • And Brian said, yeah, that's it.

  • And he said, you know, I insist that this is accurate.

  • Again, I was turning science into poetry, actually.

  • But now getting back to this idea about poetry--

  • and I'm very serious about this-- Einstein was

  • asked-- once he was describing where he got his ideas.

  • A lot of times it would be the idea of relativity.

  • He said, well-- this is what he said.

  • I imagine myself sitting on a beam of light,

  • and the beam of light is rushing through the universe

  • at the speed of light.

  • And I look around me, I saw everything rushing past me,

  • and I was standing still.

  • He said, after that, it was just a question of figuring out

  • the mathematics, which he said was hard for him.

  • What?

  • Evidently, it was not hard-- I mean, not that hard for him.

  • But so I began to see-- not only him,

  • but you look at someone like Darwin.

  • The biological sciences are very different

  • from the physical sciences.

  • The physical sciences-- we do a lot

  • of deduction and mathematics.

  • Biological science-- there's induction.

  • That means a lot of observation.

  • He went on the famous voyage of the Beagle.

  • He was, I think, out for about two years in a boat and just

  • looking at species and how they change from island--

  • he was out in the south seas, and he went from island

  • to island.

  • He would see that almost the same species

  • would be on another island but had changed a little bit.

  • He began to see how biological entities like this

  • could change, and he didn't think very much about it.

  • He just collected information, collected information.

  • And he finally came up with this astonishing idea of mutation,

  • that things change because of sunspots or whatever

  • for natural reasons, and then what

  • he called natural selection, which

  • is that after the mutation change,

  • this new entity, if it has survivability,

  • would then replace the non-mutated one so

  • that natural selection became a form-- that's

  • where the idea of evolution came from.

  • And this is also an astonishing--

  • if you think about it.

  • I mean, can you imagine if you had been doing this

  • and you had been on a boat for two years

  • just looking at flowers?

  • Would you have come up with this idea?

  • ARTURO BEJAR: I don't think so.

  • PHILIP GLASS: I don't know about that.

  • I just find that these amazing scientists

  • have the dreams of poets.

  • And then they have to find the science to explain it.

  • But without the vision, there is no theory.

  • So in a way, I began to see-- I came to this as a very

  • young man, and I began to see science

  • as a form of poetry, a poetry which has the ability

  • to create technology which then really changes

  • things even more rapidly.

  • So I got very involved with the idea of science in music,

  • and then of course, because as a modern person--

  • I began to think about climate change and things like that.

  • And so the concerts that we do and what I try to do-- I'm

  • trying to bring them all together,

  • and we are actually kind of succeeding.

  • And this time, Jonathan is going to come and give

  • a talk about the city.

  • I've got the copy of the final draft.

  • It's not been printed yet.

  • It's so interesting to read.

  • It is kind of like poetry, but it

  • took someone who was willing to sit down and think about this

  • and to come up with the-- you know Jonathan.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Yeah.

  • PHILIP GLASS: At any rate-- so anyway, what was the question?

  • ARTURO BEJAR: No, you talked about it.

  • It was about how you set black holes to music or the theory

  • behind it to music.

  • PHILIP GLASS: You know, what I find

  • is that it's not just my ideas.

  • I find many people are interested in science

  • and art and dance and theater.

  • Poetry.

  • It goes together very well.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Which takes me to another thing

  • that I got to watch, which was the concept around language

  • and collaboration.

  • So I was wondering if you could talk

  • a little bit about when you began

  • collaborating with Foday Suso.

  • PHILIP GLASS: Oh, that's interesting.

  • That's a different thing.

  • I was cooperating with dancers and filmmakers

  • at the center over there, and then I

  • began collaborating with composers, first just people

  • that I knew-- but then I began working with composers

  • from completely different traditions,

  • and that really changed my ideas about music more than anything

  • else.

  • I just played Arturo some music that I

  • had made with some indigenous people from Mexico.

  • Indians, actually, who live in the mountains.

  • They didn't even speak Spanish.

  • I certainly didn't speak Indian languages.

  • And we managed to put a record together.

  • And with Foday Suso-- he's a griot.

  • He's from the Mandinka people in West Africa, the Gambia.

  • That's near Senegal and Mali, kind of right in between them.

  • And he tells a story of the Mandinka people and music.

  • The griots do that.

  • They have something like 107, 106 songs

  • that they have to learn.

  • I know him very well.

  • I met him more than 35 years ago.

  • We do concerts quite a lot together since then.

  • But let me tell you a story, a funny story.

  • Then maybe we will go on to something else

  • because I can tell funny stories all night without getting

  • to the point that we're maybe trying to get to, which--

  • I'm not even sure what it is.

  • So the first time I saw Foday, he

  • has a big kora, which is a gourd, and there are 17--

  • or is it-- 17, 18 strings.

  • And he plays the strings.

  • It's like a harp.

  • And the gourd takes the sound, and it comes out that way.

  • Of course, we also amplify it, too.

  • I was asked to do music for a play

  • by Jean Genet called "Les Paravents," "The Screens."

  • Now, it was a story about the French in North Africa.

  • So I thought, well, maybe I should

  • do a piece with an African composer,

  • and I would be the European-based-- I'm not

  • European, but the music is based on Central European art music,

  • so that goes with that.

  • And so I asked Foday-- I had gone on a trip with him

  • to Africa working with Godfrey Reggio in a movie called

  • "Powaqqatsi," and he had taken me to hear music,

  • but I hadn't thought that much about the music itself.

  • I mean, I liked it, but I didn't really

  • think about how it was made.

  • And so then I called Foday.

  • I said, I have to do this piece.

  • We have to do African and European music

  • sometimes together but sometimes separate.

  • OK.

  • So we came to the studio.

  • And now I knew this from my experiences--

  • the first thing we had to do was to tune the instruments.

  • I mean, without that, we can't even play.

  • This is basic stuff.

  • The piano was a little too complicated.

  • So we kept the piano, and he would tune to the piano.

  • Now, the scale in the African music

  • is a little bit different.

  • The fourth-- I don't know.

  • So not to get too technical, but the fourth note of the scale

  • is a little more flat than ours is,

  • and the third is a little more sharp.

  • So if you listen to-- if he played with the piano,

  • somebody would sound out of tune.

  • It probably would have been him because I can play louder

  • than him, but not necessarily.

  • So he had lived in the States for a while.

  • He traveled back and forth to Africa,

  • but he came, and he had learned to retune.

  • He was retuning his instrument.

  • He was playing with Herbie Hancock and people like that

  • and playing at jazz, and he had to tune with them,

  • so he knew how to do it.

  • I didn't know anything about that.

  • So we sat down, and he played a note which was similar to an A,

  • very close to an A, and he said, this is the first note.

  • I said, OK, so here's the A. Here's my piano note.

  • And he tuned it, got it right, and he nodded and said--

  • and I go to the B flat above that,

  • and he played-- well, actually, I went to the B natural

  • because we were kind of in D.

  • And he played the B, and I said, wait a second.

  • What do you call the first note?

  • He said, well, that's the first note.

  • I said OK, did the second note, and I said,

  • what do you call this?

  • And he said, I call that the second note.

  • And then we got to the third note, which is C sharp.

  • I tuned it, and he said-- I knew what was coming.

  • And he said, that's the one that's the one that

  • comes after the one before.

  • And then I suddenly had the realization

  • that his notes didn't have names.

  • And when I was a kid, I took my first flute lesson

  • with a flutist from the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.

  • And he gave me a flute.

  • You hold it like this.

  • He said, OK, put your thumb here and the finger there.

  • And I had the position, and I blow through the hole here.

  • And he's pointing on the page.

  • He said, that's a B. He showed me

  • what it looked like, he showed what it sounded like,

  • and he showed me how to finger it.

  • So at that moment, I identified the name of the note,

  • the position of the hand, and the intonation of the note.

  • There was the sound of the note, the key of the note.

  • This was now-- oh, I would guess 25 years later, 20 years later.

  • I'm sitting with this guy, and he tells me there

  • are no names to the notes.

  • And I almost fainted.

  • I was so shocked.

  • I felt like the floor had opened up

  • and I was floating in the air.

  • I said, Foday, I have to stop.

  • And I got up, and I had to walk out and walked around.

  • I said this is-- I couldn't fathom this,

  • that he could play music without knowing the names of the notes.

  • So we got over that.

  • We ended up being collaborators, and we've

  • done many, many concerts together.

  • He knows the names of the notes now, by the way.

  • But he never bothered to know them before that.

  • So when I began working with people from other traditions,

  • the way we understand music not emotionally

  • but structurally and intellectually--

  • it was very different.

  • Emotionally, I could understand it very quickly,

  • but how he thought about it I didn't.

  • This happened some years before.

  • It happened when I had been working with Ravi Shankar

  • and I was working with Alla Rahka.

  • I was learning the rhythmic system of Indian music.

  • That's the end of the story.

  • I won't get into it.

  • Anyway, that was another good story which

  • I'm not going to tell now.

  • But the point was that I began to see that in order

  • for musicians to play together who

  • come from-- we have to start to make some accommodation.

  • And when he went back to Africa, by the way,

  • and his friends found out he had retuned the instruments,

  • they were very upset.

  • They said, you can't retune the kora.

  • He said, well, if you want to play in Europe or America,

  • you've got to retune.

  • And they said, no, no, no.

  • We're not going to retune.

  • He said, well, then you're not going to play out.

  • You're not going to play there.

  • And so he said, well, let me hear you play.

  • And then he had retuned the kora,

  • and he was playing the kora.

  • And he said, it sounded perfect.

  • Same thing happened Ravi Shankar.

  • When he came to America and Europe

  • in person to some big concerts, back in India

  • they thought he had betrayed the raga,

  • and he had to go back to India and do it at a big concert.

  • He told me this.

  • He did a big concert in Bombay and one in Delhi,

  • and he had to prove to people he could still play the sitar.

  • They thought he had forgotten how to play it.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Wow.

  • PHILIP GLASS: So the tuning thing is a big deal.

  • But what was interesting was I began

  • to understand that there's a relative truth to music,

  • and there's an absolute truth.

  • The absolute truth we have no problem with.

  • It's the relative truth that we have the problem

  • with, the tuning.

  • But when I don't have to do the tuning,

  • I can totally get-- working with the Mexican musicians,

  • I could not figure out how they counted.

  • They were doing it in a rhythmic cycle,

  • but it sounded to me like there would be a cycle of 15,

  • then a cycle of 15, a cycle of 15.

  • Then it'd be cycle of 14.

  • And I counted again, and every third time it would be 14.

  • I said, OK, I got it.

  • And then the next time they did it, it was 16.

  • I couldn't figure-- well, how do they--

  • do they just remember that?

  • And were they counting at all?

  • I think they weren't counting.

  • And I was playing with this one guy.

  • He was playing the-- we called it a guitar.

  • It looks like a guitar, but he built it himself.

  • We had someone translating into Spanish for me.

  • And I was playing with him a while,

  • and I was trying just to play with him, and after a while,

  • he said, you got it.

  • You got it.

  • And I began playing with them, and I missed it again.

  • I never figured out how to do it,

  • but what I figured out-- another thing.

  • A different thing.

  • I found out, if I played in a cycle

  • long enough, that the inconsistencies didn't matter.

  • Everything would add up to maybe 86 or something like that.

  • I had to work in a very big cycle,

  • and then we could be together.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: And that takes me to the-- he's

  • going to play a little bit, but there's one more question

  • before we play for a little bit and come back to talking later,

  • which is-- so you take these rooms that

  • have Jaron Lanier, Jonathan Rose,

  • the guy that comes from a technology background.

  • You've got Suso.

  • You've got all of these people from

  • different artistic sensibilities, instruments,

  • musical language.

  • They're all talented, strong-minded.

  • How do you get--

  • PHILIP GLASS: Well, at the beginning, in the early 60s,

  • we used to get together, and we'd have

  • what we called a world band.

  • And you'd find someone from Africa.

  • You'd get someone from India.

  • And you all get together, and it sounded terrible

  • because everybody was in a different key--

  • slightly different.

  • It's not that you were in a different key,

  • but the fourths were different, the thirds were different,

  • the sixths were different so that someone was always

  • out of tune, and we never sat down and retuned.

  • Basically, these world bands just dissolved,

  • and then after a while, no one did it anymore.

  • It didn't start up again until I began playing with people,

  • and we actually addressed the issue of tuning.

  • That's why it was so-- since we were in North America,

  • we used the European tuning.

  • Now there are certain instruments you can't use.

  • A Balaton, which is like a xylophone-- you can't return

  • it, so you won't find that instrument in any of the-- you

  • won't find the African balafon, but you'll

  • find in my music an American xylophone.

  • I have to pick one that's-- some things you can't tune.

  • In Australia, the didgeridoo player--

  • you know what a didgeridoo is?

  • A long-- I had one guy I played--

  • I love this guy, Mark Atkins.

  • And I said, Mark, how do you make-- where did you

  • get that instrument?

  • He said, well, I get a limb off a tree,

  • and then I put the ants in, and the ants eat their way

  • through the center.

  • He said, I have to come back in about maybe four, five weeks,

  • and then knock it out, and all the inside of it goes out,

  • and I have a long tube.

  • And he said, and that's what I play.

  • And I had this fantastic conversation, and I said, OK.

  • Now I was playing with him, and I said, how do you play that?

  • What are you thinking about when you're playing it?

  • He said, well-- and we're doing a piece called "Orion."

  • I did it with musicians from Brazil, from Africa,

  • from China.

  • I had five or six-- a guy, Ashton McIsaac

  • from Cape Breton, who played violin.

  • And so I began asking people where their music came from.

  • This was the most interesting thing.

  • I said, where does the music come from?

  • It's a very simple question.

  • And most said, oh, I'll tell you.

  • I get to this place in the music, and I close my eyes

  • and I see a kangaroo running across the outback,

  • and I play the music that goes with him.

  • I asked Ravi Shankar.

  • I ask everybody.

  • I ask everybody this question.

  • You get the most-- it's a very simple question,

  • and if you ask it not knowing what the answer is,

  • you'll get the answer.

  • They'll tell you what they think.

  • I asked Ravi Shankar once.

  • I said, Ravi, where does this music come from?

  • I was sitting with him in his hotel room in London.

  • It was years and years ago.

  • And he turned-- this is a great story.

  • He was sitting on the bed crossed legged,

  • and I was sitting in a chair, and on the table

  • was a picture of an Indian gentleman

  • in a narrow kind of coat.

  • He turned to the picture, and he did a full prostration,

  • bowed to the picture, and he said,

  • the grace of the guru, the music is coming to me.

  • That beautiful?

  • Now let me tell you one more because you'll like this one.

  • This is from the Indian Mexican guy.

  • I like to tell Mexican stories.

  • So we had done a concert together.

  • We had just done a concert together

  • in a little place called Real de Catorce with these two

  • musicians, and there was one guy who was our translator.

  • And we went on afterwards to have a nice fire.

  • And they like to do that.

  • Nice big fire outside.

  • Concert was over.

  • We all went out to do the fire.

  • [INAUDIBLE] was standing there, and I say, [INAUDIBLE], where

  • does that music come from?

  • The same question.

  • You'll never-- you can't imagine what people say.

  • Unimaginable things.

  • He said, well, I looked at my father--

  • my grandfather, the fire.

  • My grandfather, the fire, has no mouth,

  • so when he wants to sing, he has to use mine.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Oh, wow.

  • PHILIP GLASS: I mean, these are revelations that are profound,

  • and I must say that I've gone through my life in music

  • talking to people very simply about music

  • and asking what-- and then people ask me the same thing.

  • I say-- I had even better-- I don't

  • know if I'll go into that.

  • Shall we go onto something else?

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Yes.

  • The piano, and then I'll ask you where that music came from.

  • PHILIP GLASS: Oh, OK.

  • OK.

  • I said I was going to play.

  • We had a wonderful concert yesterday,

  • and I thought I couldn't come here and not play tonight.

  • So it's going to be one piece called "Mad Rush."

  • I'm playing it because he likes that piece.

  • I hope you like it, too.

  • It's a piece originally written for the organ of St. John

  • the Divine, the cathedral in New York.

  • It was the occasion of the Dalai Lama's first visit

  • to New York in '78, and they were going to give a talk.

  • And the people who organized the event weren't sure

  • when he was going to arrive exactly, so they said, well,

  • why don't you-- could you play, just play some music until he

  • comes?

  • Oh, I didn't know when he was going to come, either.

  • So I had composed-- I composed the music for that,

  • and that occasion, I played for about half an--

  • I'm not gong to play for half an hour.

  • I'll play about 14 minutes.

  • So I made a piece of indefinite length.

  • Actually, not a problem.

  • On that occasion, it was half an hour,

  • but I'm going to play about half that version right now.

  • So this is-- oh, the piece is called "Mad Rush."

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • [PLAYING "MAD RUSH"]

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • Thank you.

  • Thank you.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: I love you, man.

  • PHILIP GLASS: What was that?

  • ARTURO BEJAR: I love you, man.

  • So where did that come from?

  • PHILIP GLASS: You know, I ask myself the same question.

  • I could never come up with the right answer.

  • But something-- I come up with an answer for a while.

  • I first say, well, music is a kind of language.

  • But you know, that's like saying a chicken is

  • kind of like a bird.

  • It doesn't tell you anything.

  • It doesn't tell you something you already don't know.

  • It didn't reveal anything to me, and I was very dissatisfied

  • with that, but for a long while, I had no answer.

  • So I would continue asking people.

  • And then about four or five years ago,

  • I was giving a talk, kind of like we're doing right now,

  • and someone in the audience said, well,

  • where does music come from?

  • And here's what I did.

  • I answered.

  • I said something I wasn't prepared to say.

  • It was almost like someone else had said it.

  • I said, well, music is a place.

  • It's as real as Chicago or Atlanta or Boston.

  • It's a place, and when you go to listen to music,

  • you go to that place.

  • I thought, OK.

  • I hadn't heard that one before, and I

  • thought that was-- that seems right to me.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: So one of the things

  • that I appreciate the most about your career

  • is that you have these collaborations,

  • like with Godfrey-- began with "Powaqqatsi,"

  • and made a movie a couple of years ago, a year or two ago.

  • You have Suso.

  • You have the ensemble that's been together

  • for a really long time.

  • And so how you manage to have all

  • of these great collaborative friendships

  • over that long a period of time and have them sustained?

  • PHILIP GLASS: You know, I'm-- music is,

  • above everything else, a social activity.

  • It's not only between myself and the audience.

  • It's between the people that play.

  • I accepted that very early.

  • As a boy, I played a flute in an orchestra.

  • I was 10 years old.

  • I was playing in the orchestra then.

  • Music to me was always something that people did together.

  • It wasn't a problem.

  • I've met now-- because of the-- I've

  • met several players, musicians here, on this trip here,

  • and I'm going to be playing with them at some point.

  • As soon as I hear somebody or I meet them, if I like them,

  • I want to play music with them, and then I find a way to do it.

  • Then I have to look and say, do I really have time to do this?

  • And I look, and it goes, yeah, there is a state.

  • And I find it, and I just put the date in.

  • Yeah.

  • It's like I kind of, I would say-- not an obsession,

  • because it has a negative sound to it.

  • It's an attraction that is very strong for me.

  • And so all playing with other people-- I do do concerts.

  • I do solo concerts, and I like to do them in a certain way

  • because when I do solo concerts, I can often

  • play pieces differently.

  • If I play with other people, then I have to play the way

  • I wrote it.

  • Well, that's pretty much the way I wrote it.

  • But I'd like to do solo concerts also

  • because that's something different.

  • It is not so much about playing with another person

  • but playing in front of people.

  • Now this is the most interesting thing.

  • Music is a transaction between-- that's what we say in language.

  • But it's something that passes between us.

  • You know, they found-- I read this a year or so ago.

  • They found in some caves-- these caves are always

  • in France for some reason.

  • They found-- they think it's an instrument.

  • They found wings of a pigeon that were hollowed out,

  • and they just thought that these were

  • very early versions of flute.

  • 70,000 years ago.

  • You know, I think that was the first language.

  • Maybe people picked it up, and they made a song.

  • Do you go to-- you know, I also never miss

  • going to one of these natural history museums

  • and going-- I find them extremely--

  • not only to hear, to see what contemporary people are like

  • but to go back in time.

  • That's why I really-- Jonathan spoke about the first city, Ur.

  • So interesting for me.

  • The thing is that our humanness, the thing that

  • makes us distinct from-- it seems unique, in a way.

  • Of course, it's probably maybe not unique,

  • but it strikes us that way.

  • It's not just our attachment.

  • Even our-- what is the opposite of attachment?

  • We're repelled by certain activities, certain people.

  • Whatever it is, whether we're attracted to it

  • or repelled by it, it's so strong.

  • You know, this is an interesting thing.

  • We talk about the art of ancient times,

  • and we look at-- we can see the vases from Egypt

  • or the pyramids in Mexico or the clothing

  • they find that's left over from some nomadic people living

  • in Siberia or someplace like that.

  • Everything-- I find that extremely interesting

  • and deeply moving, and I'm not sure why,

  • because I don't need to read about it.

  • I just need to be in the presence of it.

  • So in a way, you say, how do I do it?

  • I'm drawn to do it.

  • It's my nature to play music, and I've played it all my life.

  • And if I meet someone, if I have any connection to them

  • at all-- they can play music?

  • I'll play music with them, because something happens.

  • Isn't that so?

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Yeah.

  • I've seen that.

  • And so coming back to the festival, what would

  • be your vision or your hope?

  • PHILIP GLASS: My what?

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Vision or hope around the--

  • PHILIP GLASS: I would like-- we're building the festival up.

  • This year, Victor Sanchez has come from Mexico.

  • He works in the field of what we call human development,

  • human behavior.

  • He has amazing things that he does.

  • He takes people into the desert or-- and there, we're

  • going to go into a number of national forests in the area.

  • Pfeiffer Forest is right there down there in Big Sur.

  • And he goes into-- he goes in with 10, 20, sometimes

  • 30 people, and they can go for a week.

  • I think what we're going to do there-- he'll

  • work in the daytime with a group of people.

  • And these are actually transforming experiences

  • because he's spent his life doing this.

  • And he's found out things in nature

  • which you have no idea what they are.

  • I've seen them, because I've been with him.

  • So his coming, he'll be in the daytime.

  • Then we have the concerts at night.

  • And it will be, or they'll be-- in this case,

  • we have a movie of Laurie Anderson called-- her dog

  • movie, wonderful movie.

  • And she just made it.

  • And then the second night, I'm doing an evening

  • of poetry and music with her.

  • Then we have the Club Diamond, which

  • is a small but very intense and beautiful

  • theater piece for one performer and a musician,

  • and based on the activity of street performers

  • in Tokyo who go around and entertain children,

  • and they give them candy, and they-- they just go from place

  • to place and do that.

  • And this character is the character of this piece.

  • You have to see it.

  • It's really beautiful.

  • We're going to have some music before then,

  • but I'm going to get some music, some younger composers.

  • Then the next night, we have this piece by Jerry Quickley.

  • It's called "The Whistleblower."

  • It's about--

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Edward Snowden--

  • PHILIP GLASS: Yeah.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: --and the surveillance state and--

  • PHILIP GLASS: Yeah, the whole thing.

  • And it's wildly funny and touching.

  • And it's mixed in with parts about Allen Ginsberg.

  • And now how he did that, I don't know.

  • But he's got Allen in there too.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Yeah, I'll expand on that a little bit.

  • The Allen Ginsberg piece is written

  • from the perspective of the agent that

  • is signed to surveil him.

  • And it's derived from the papers that they

  • got published about this agent that was surveilling Ginsberg.

  • And it's amazing.

  • PHILIP GLASS: Yeah, he got the papers

  • from the Freedom of Information Act.

  • He got these papers.

  • And it becomes the thing.

  • And so we have that one.

  • So then we'll have some-- and then Foday Suso will playing.

  • I'll be in front.

  • We'll be doing a musical.

  • We'll be doing-- I think that's one where I think that our bass

  • player will be playing with.

  • That's with a string quartet with Jerry Quickley.

  • But I think it will just be Foday and myself.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Yeah.

  • PHILIP GLASS: So it's-- with a very few handful of people,

  • we cover a huge, a very big area of activity.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Yeah.

  • And so, like, if the festival sounds really cool--

  • and I wanted-- if you have any questions that you want

  • to ask him, part of the goal of coming here today

  • is feel free to ask him anything.

  • We still have some time, and I wanted

  • to allow enough time for that.

  • But if the idea of the festival sounds like really interesting

  • to you and you want to be involved or engaged

  • in some way, just grab me when we're done here.

  • PHILIP GLASS: You have some information, yeah.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: And we can take it from there.

  • Because I think it's extraordinary

  • that-- like you were anywhere else in the world,

  • you would go to New York.

  • And you would perform at Carnegie Hall, or the Met,

  • and you'd come out, do your thing, and then you'd be out.

  • And they'll be waving from the audience,

  • but it would be about it.

  • And here there's an opportunity to be with 100, 200 people,

  • and--

  • PHILIP GLASS: Maybe 300 of them.

  • We're at the Henry Miller Library,

  • which is an outdoor venue in the Redwoods.

  • And it's just very intimate.

  • And it probably could be 300 people.

  • He is-- it's legal now for him to do these concerts.

  • But he had to get some kind of permit

  • through the state or something.

  • And they're allowing him 300 people.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: OK.

  • So does anybody have any questions

  • that they would like to ask Phil?

  • And please, come up to the microphone.

  • AUDIENCE: Hi, how are you?

  • Actually, first question would be,

  • when is the Henry Miller show?

  • ARTURO BEJAR: The Henry Miller Memorial Library--

  • AUDIENCE: Ah.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: --last weekend of September.

  • PHILIP GLASS: It's in Big Sur.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: In Big Sur.

  • AUDIENCE: Last weekend-- OK, great.

  • I had a question.

  • I play music most of my life.

  • And it's great to see someone with such a library

  • and done so much.

  • And one thing I've seen, including myself,

  • is a lot of people who play music do it out of passion.

  • And then they lose that passion, or they become uninspired.

  • And you spoke a little earlier about, like,

  • someone being inspired is as simple as a imagining

  • a kangaroo running.

  • And I was just wondering, what is your inspiration,

  • or how do you continue to find inspiration in writing music

  • throughout your entire life?

  • PHILIP GLASS: I didn't completely hear.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Yeah, so how do find and keep inspiration

  • throughout your life?

  • What feeds your creative--

  • PHILIP GLASS: Oh, it's my insane, intense curiosity

  • really.

  • I find it all so interesting.

  • I have no trouble-- I have trouble sleeping

  • in the morning.

  • I get up early and start thinking about this stuff.

  • Right now, I'm working on the music

  • for Jerry's piece, which we're going to be

  • starting to rehearse in May.

  • So I get up for that.

  • And then I'm working on a new symphony later in the day.

  • I don't know.

  • I find it very interesting.

  • And right now, there's a movement

  • in the world of performance and music of younger people,

  • people in their 20s and early 30s, that's

  • extremely interesting.

  • And it's happening-- this happened--

  • OK, I can tell you that many of you don't know this.

  • But 60 year ago, when the McCarthy communist trials

  • were going on, at that time, it was a terrible time.

  • It was even as-- it was as bad as Trump.

  • It was really that bad.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • I mean, Trump-- McCarthy was a real-- anyway--

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • And at that time, what happened--

  • you had Allen Ginsberg coming around then.

  • And then you had William Burroughs.

  • And you had all this-- there was a sudden explosion of the art,

  • of creativity.

  • And I began to think, that's mother nature balancing it.

  • You know, you get some insanity here.

  • Then you have to have some art over here to make it bearable.

  • I really believe that's true.

  • Now we're in the-- I don't have to tell you.

  • The news, you can barely watch it.

  • It's gotten horrific.

  • It's terrible.

  • And yet at the same time, I find young people

  • as more idealistic and committed to self-expression

  • and exploration of their humanity

  • than I have seen in 30 or 40 years.

  • It's very, very-- if you-- it's a very, very rich time

  • right now for poets, for musicians, for artists.

  • So if you get tired of watching this junk on television,

  • go out and see some of the stuff.

  • It's really-- I'm sure that you can find it.

  • It's all over the place.

  • AUDIENCE: I try to fill my life with that on a daily basis.

  • Thank you.

  • AUDIENCE: Hi.

  • About five years ago, a friend of mine

  • said that she had just released an album

  • of her own compositions.

  • And I said, oh, that's nice.

  • I've never been able to compose music.

  • And she said, your best friend just died.

  • Go over to the piano and play something.

  • OK.

  • And I went over and started at A minor and something.

  • And then it kind of worked into another key.

  • And then it finished.

  • And I-- I never experienced anything like that.

  • And since then-- then my first thought is,

  • well, is this really music?

  • You know, because I did it.

  • But it was, you know, now--

  • PHILIP GLASS: Thank you.

  • AUDIENCE: --I can play some things.

  • PHILIP GLASS: By the way, you're the piano tuner right?

  • AUDIENCE: Yes.

  • PHILIP GLASS: This is the guy that tuned the piano.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • And he told me just before the concert,

  • he said, yeah, I've been tuning the piano all my life.

  • And I've just started to write music now.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • PHILIP GLASS: So maybe he'll--

  • AUDIENCE: Thank you.

  • PHILIP GLASS: Thank you for your thoughts.

  • AUDIENCE: Well, first I want to thank you for being here.

  • You've been sort of one of the gods of my musical pantheon

  • since I first saw [INAUDIBLE] back in the early '80s

  • when it first came out.

  • I wanted to know if you thought about

  • or if you've talked about how the internet

  • and the communication technology we have now and sort

  • of the democratizing out elements of that

  • are part of that explosion of creativity and self-expression

  • you had just mentioned.

  • PHILIP GLASS: I didn't quite hear.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: So how does the-- how do

  • you think the internet has democratized and opened up

  • creativity?

  • PHILIP GLASS: It's helped me a lot.

  • I was writing music for a play recently.

  • I was in the theater.

  • And the director said, I need a song for the end of the play.

  • So I-- I was watching-- I wrote the song.

  • And I took a picture of it was my camera, my little, you know,

  • iPhone.

  • And I sent it on the internet to my office downtown.

  • They took it.

  • They turned it into-- a person down there made a demo from it.

  • And a few minutes later, he sent it up by internet.

  • I had a version of the piece done within about an hour.

  • That's the internet for you.

  • I mean, you can't knock that.

  • And I said, oh, here's-- I got the song.

  • Do you want to give a-- he said, when did you write it?

  • I said, while you were rehearsing,

  • so I just decided to write it.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • And he said, do you want to give it to Ed now?

  • He said, well, yeah, yeah.

  • We'll give it to-- so that song ended up--

  • so the internet's amazing.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • You know, when I find out-- first

  • I thought I had to scan things.

  • Then I realized I could just take a picture

  • and send the picture to the-- and someone would put it

  • into the computer.

  • And amazing, huh?

  • So how does it-- I find it mainly helpful.

  • It helps me to-- years ago when I

  • was working on a-- I was working on a,

  • I think it was "The Hours" or something like that.

  • It was a movie.

  • But it was being recorded in London.

  • And the director called me up-- I

  • was living in-- I was in Nova Scotia.

  • He said, I need some changes.

  • I need it by tomorrow afternoon.

  • I said, Scott, you're not going to get tomorrow afternoon.

  • He said, yes I will.

  • I said, what are you going to do?

  • He said, someone's flying to Halifax right now.

  • They'll be at your door in six hours.

  • Do the rewrite.

  • Give it to him.

  • He'll get back on the plane.

  • And I'll have it by tomorrow afternoon.

  • And he did.

  • So that was the old days.

  • Today, he would just called me and said, hey send the piece.

  • And I would send it by internet.

  • It's amazing, huh?

  • I was asked, are there any bad-- I guess there are bad things.

  • But I tend to--

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • I tend to look at the positive stuff.

  • And you've probably gathered that already.

  • I tend to look at the positive sides of things.

  • AUDIENCE: Thank you.

  • AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.

  • My name is Rick.

  • I assume decades ago when you started composing,

  • you used paper, pencil, score sheet, and piano.

  • As the decades go by, technology became available.

  • Have you changed your process to use software?

  • PHILIP GLASS: Well, no.

  • I still use-- now what I have to do,

  • the people that make the music paper don't do it anymore.

  • But what I found is that their printers, if you give them

  • a sample of what you want, they'll print it for you.

  • I'm still running with pencil and paper.

  • AUDIENCE: You are.

  • PHILIP GLASS: I am.

  • And then what I have, I have some young fellows

  • that work in the studio for me.

  • And they put it into the computer.

  • Once it gets in the computer, now anybody can deal with it.

  • But that the manuscript, no one can deal with that anymore.

  • AUDIENCE: Because I use software.

  • I use technology devices.

  • Sometimes I use my phone for an idea.

  • And then I go to the paper, and you know.

  • I'm wondering iff--

  • PHILIP GLASS: Well, you're using both.

  • I find that, you know, at this point,

  • my friends say, well, why don't you just

  • learn to write it into a computer?

  • And I-- you know, I say, well, how long will

  • it take me to really learn to do it?

  • They say about six weeks.

  • And I said, six weeks-- I can write a string

  • quartet in six weeks.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • I said, well, what would you rather me do, write

  • a string quartet or to learn how-- he said,

  • no you go write the string quartet.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • AUDIENCE: Thank you very much.

  • PHILIP GLASS: But, you know, there's

  • another thing about the manuscript, by the way.

  • I've got-- I don't want to tell you how many thousands of pages

  • I've got of manuscript.

  • If you write music-- and you have files, right?

  • AUDIENCE: Yeah.

  • PHILIP GLASS: I can sell my manuscripts.

  • You can sell your files.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • AUDIENCE: But I can print and become files, right?

  • PHILIP GLASS: Well, OK.

  • OK, I'll give you that.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • AUDIENCE: Thank you.

  • AUDIENCE: Hi, thank you so much for coming, Philip,

  • and amazing performance of "Mad Rush."

  • So Bradley was mentioning in the beginning of

  • to talk about how touched he was yesterday by the performance.

  • And I was very touched by your performance as well.

  • I'm going to treasure it forever.

  • I think we all have these performances

  • that we get to see-- and it can be something very

  • formal like at Carnegie Hall, or it

  • can be somebody playing the guitar in front of you--

  • that we treasure very much.

  • And I would like to ask you, do you

  • have one or a few specific things

  • that you witnessed in music that you would like

  • to take with you to eternity?

  • PHILIP GLASS: There are two things

  • I saw that were really amazing.

  • When I was about 18 or 17 or 18, I was in New York

  • and Segovia came to play at Carnegie Hall.

  • Carnegie Hall is a pretty big hall.

  • He sat at the front of the stage in a chair.

  • And he's kind of a little guy.

  • He leaned over with the guitar-- the place was packed--

  • and began playing very quietly.

  • After about a few minutes, it filled the room.

  • You could hear every note he did.

  • And he sat and just played for maybe, maybe 75, 80 minutes.

  • It was a memorable concert.

  • Then I had another memorable concert about the same time.

  • I was at the Village Vanguard in New York.

  • And John Coltrane was playing with a band.

  • And he was playing insanely good, beautiful music.

  • But you know how a band will come.

  • They'll come-- it was break time.

  • So the band stopped, and they went to the bar.

  • John Coltrane just kept playing.

  • He played straight through the break.

  • He was still playing-- he was still playing

  • the changes in everything.

  • They came back from the break.

  • They picked up their instruments.

  • And they just started playing again.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • He never stopped, I said, oh boy,

  • that's-- that's a monster--

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • PHILIP GLASS: --a monster talent.

  • AUDIENCE: Thank you.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Thank you.

  • Yes?

  • AUDIENCE: Hi there.

  • So you told a story earlier about

  • when you were playing with a musician who

  • played the gourd harp, and how the tuning was

  • very different from your piano and sort of the consonances

  • that you're used to, and that you didn't tune your piano

  • to adjust to him.

  • And he adjusted to you.

  • Have you ever had to adjust to another tuning

  • system in a collaboration and really

  • had to internalize what they consider consonances

  • as we might consider dissonances?

  • And if so, what was your experience with that?

  • PHILIP GLASS: Well, I haven't.

  • When I work with people, mostly the people who

  • have been-- they might be Indian,

  • or from Africa, or maybe from Australia-- the Australian,

  • that guy, in order to change keys,

  • he had a-- he had another instrument with him.

  • He couldn't just cut off part of it, or he wasn't willing to.

  • Mostly, it's just the way it is.

  • I mean, we have all-- they're over here where we are.

  • We've got all these instruments playing.

  • So for six or eight of us to change our tuning

  • and there's one guy who's out of tune-- well,

  • he's not really out of tune.

  • He's playing in his own tuning.

  • It's easier for him to change than for us.

  • And we usually do it that way.

  • I haven't had to do that.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Yeah, but separate from tuning,

  • like I thought when I've heard you

  • talk about when you first got exposed to [INAUDIBLE] music.

  • PHILIP GLASS: Yeah.

  • ARTURO BEJAR: And you were trying to notate,

  • and you kept getting it-- they--

  • PHILIP GLASS: Well, that's different.

  • I had problems with the rhythmic structure.

  • This wasn't about the tuning.

  • I could write them.

  • Because [INAUDIBLE], he-- I asked him

  • what he was going to do.

  • He said, well, I'm going to play [INAUDIBLE] which is usually

  • in F sharp.

  • But I'm going to play it down half a step enough

  • for everybody else.

  • And that's what he did.

  • So it made it very easy for us.

  • But I was writing down the music.

  • And Alla Rahka, the tabla player said, no, the accents

  • are in the wrong place, the wrong place,

  • they're in the wrong place.

  • And I didn't know what he meant.

  • So I would try and write it out again in a different way.

  • And he said, no.

  • And he says, the notes are the same.

  • Well, the notes are the same.

  • I don't know what the hell he was talking about.

  • It was the first morning of our collab.

  • You know, I was hired for that morning.

  • And I couldn't afford to get fired.

  • I was living on a very small fellowship in Paris.

  • And I knew I was-- I had to solve this problem.

  • And it's nothing like-- it was like, I say,

  • I think I've got an execution to focus the mind.

  • So my execution would have been if I got fired.

  • And I looked at the music paper.

  • And I did an inspiring thing.

  • I took my eraser, and I erased all the bar lines.

  • And I looked at it again.

  • And I saw a string of notes.

  • And I looked at it, and now I saw groups of twos and threes.

  • I didn't see the bar lines anymore.

  • I saw three, three, two, two, two, three, three, two, two.

  • And I realized, just by looking at it.

  • And I saw that-- I don't know how

  • I did this very, very quickly.

  • I saw that the first four or five notes,

  • they would add up to 16.

  • The second was 16.

  • The third one was 16.

  • And I saw that there was a larger group of 16

  • that all the threes and twos fit into.

  • And so I just put the bar line there.

  • And I said, what's this?

  • And he said, oh, that's called the tal.

  • And the tal just means the length, the length of the--

  • and I found out later that it could be 14 beats.

  • It could be 17 beats.

  • It could be 8 beats.

  • But the music have to follow that all the way through.

  • And then I found out also later--

  • I didn't know this at the time-- that when

  • they play the first beat, they call that the som.

  • Now when the sitar player was playing with the tabla player,

  • sometimes they would be together at the som.

  • But sometimes they would purposely

  • miss the som for two or three cycles.

  • And if you were in the audience, the audience was like this.

  • They're getting very nervous.

  • And finally, they came to the som.

  • And they go, [SIGH].

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • It was the most amazing thing.

  • This was in China.

  • It was a madras at the time when I first saw this happen.

  • And the whole audience just went-- when everyone hit.

  • But so the play of the music had to do

  • with the length of the rhythm, not with the key of the piece.

  • You know, in Western music, the tension

  • is between the tonality and the-- between the harmony

  • and the melody.

  • I'll put it that way.

  • For traditional rhythmic music, it's mostly just decorative,

  • really.

  • And in Indian music, the tension was completely

  • between the rhythm and the vocal line.

  • There was no harmony.

  • But I was really-- thinking back on it,

  • that probably changed my life, the fact that I figured that.

  • I don't even know how I did.

  • It was just luck in a certain way.

  • If I had got-- because after that,

  • I stayed with Ravi for the rest of that week.

  • And I began working with him.

  • And later on, I played music with him.

  • So it became-- it opened up a whole world of music for me.

  • Had I missed that moment, I would've been fired.

  • And I wouldn't be-- I'll be teaching counterpoint

  • in some jerk work conservatory in Ohio or someplace.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • ARTURO BEJAR: Thank you.

  • AUDIENCE: That sounds awesome.

  • Thank you.

  • AUDIENCE: I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this.

  • So you write a piece of music, people perform it, right?

  • We have pieces of music.

  • And that's been going on for quite a long time.

  • But there's this modern phenomenon

  • of mashing up and re-mixing, which

  • seems to be throwing all of that for a loop.

  • People write lots of tiny pits of music.

  • People perform by--

  • PHILIP GLASS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  • AUDIENCE: What do you think of that?

  • It seems to be changing--

  • PHILIP GLASS: I actually encourage it.

  • When someone other-- we have a record that we put out

  • on our record company where we had people do

  • covers of pieces of mine.

  • AUDIENCE: Mhm.

  • PHILIP GLASS: They did exactly what you're saying.

  • AUDIENCE: Right.

  • PHILIP GLASS: They-- and I said, oh, you know,

  • I wrote it that way.

  • But let me hear what someone else thinks about it.

  • I was always interested in what they did.

  • Now, that's not always true.

  • I just had a conversation with a conductor who

  • was looking at a new piece of mine

  • for two pianos and an orchestra.

  • It's a double piano concerto.

  • He said, well, I'm going to the rehearsal tomorrow.

  • But I have to tell you that I think the writing is much too

  • thick for the orchestra.

  • I said, yeah-- I said, Dennis, that's

  • what I'm writing these days.

  • I'm writing very dense music.

  • I said, look, if you want to, just thin it out if you want.

  • You can play it any way you want to.

  • It's not going to bother me.

  • Of course, when I was thinking to myself,

  • I'll just put the music right back afterwards anyway.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • It wasn't going to change it.

  • But I said, if it makes you happy to do it that way,

  • just go ahead and do it.

  • And he called me up the next day.

  • And he said, well, we tried it out.

  • I tried it out with your orchestration,

  • and it sounded great.

  • He said-- it was the first time this guy had ever said to me--

  • he said, I was wrong, and you were right.

  • He never had said that.

  • He's been playing music of mine for 30 years-- first time

  • he said, no, you were right.

  • And I said-- I said this before, maybe yesterday-- what happens

  • is that you begin to hear music differently.

  • Now if I can hear it differently,

  • so I hear-- what sounds right to me sounds different.

  • I'm not even sure why that is.

  • The neurologists say that the brain continues to evolve,

  • you know?

  • Or does it devolve?

  • I don't know.

  • But I find that I hear-- I'm actually hearing things

  • differently.

  • And I'm writing different music.

  • And I don't know why, except things sound right to me

  • that didn't sound right to me before.

  • And I write them down.

  • And I make everyone play it the way I wrote it.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • And people who know the music very well

  • will try to correct it.

  • And I say-- they said, this is wrong.

  • And I said, no, it's not wrong.

  • Just play the way I wrote it.

  • But apart from that, a lot of people

  • make arrangements, like a flutist will make arrangements

  • of a violin concerto, because there

  • is no-- they haven't written a flute concerto.

  • Or someone will take a piece for orchestra

  • and they'll play it with a smaller orchestra.

  • And they'll say, what do you think?

  • And I say, well, I think, if you make an arrangement,

  • I want a copy of it.

  • And it will belong to my company.

  • And we'll rent it out to other people if it's good.

  • And if it isn't good, I won't use it.

  • Well, I don't really-- the same thing with dance companies,

  • and they want to take a piece of music.

  • They said, do you want to see our company dance?

  • I said, hell no.

  • Just take the music, and do the dance.

  • What am I going to do, tell them I don't like the dance?

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • What do I know about dance?

  • So I'm actually more interested in what other people think,

  • except when it's a new piece and I'm

  • worrying-- I'm working on language,

  • then I want to hear-- I'm very obsessed right

  • now with a different language in my music.

  • That's happened in the last two or three years.

  • I can see that is happening.

  • And a cellist friend of mine was playing a [INAUDIBLE]

  • I wrote for the solo cello.

  • And I went to hear the recording.

  • And it took them hours to record.

  • It took him really about an hour or two just to record it.

  • I said, what do you think?

  • I said, Matt, what do you think of this?

  • He said, well it's an amazing piece of music.

  • I said, yeah, but who the hell is going to play it?

  • He said, oh, people will play it.

  • He said, they'll learn to play it, and they'll play it.

  • And that's probably true.

  • Now, but is that a good idea?

  • I don't know.

  • I don't know the answer to these things.

  • In many ways, I'm-- in many ways,

  • after the moment of writing, I'm just another listener.

  • It depends whether I still got my composer hat on.

  • If my composer hat isn't on, I don't hear it that way anymore.

  • And I'm very open to different things.

  • I rarely tell people that they've

  • done it wrong unless they've actually done it wrong.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • AUDIENCE: Thank you.

  • MALE SPEAKER: Unfortunately-- is this a yes/no question?

  • AUDIENCE: It's a little--

  • MALE SPEAKER: If it's a short question with a short answer,

  • we can do this.

  • PHILIP GLASS: The short answer is the hard part.

  • Sorry about that.

  • AUDIENCE: I'm not going to say that.

  • But the answer doesn't depend on me, I guess.

  • I'm just kind of curious about the creative process,

  • your creative process in general.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • Can I?

  • MALE SPEAKER: The answer is yes.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • AUDIENCE: So one thing I find amazing and fascinating

  • about music is how-- you know, I've heard analysis of pieces

  • by Chopin, Beethoven, where there's

  • this small motif of three, four notes that-- you know,

  • it's gradually generates the whole entirety of a piece.

  • And I find it absolutely incredible

  • how that process can come up, how the process works

  • to come up with that piece, yet you

  • have these little repetitive motifs from beginning to end.

  • And I wonder, how do you do it?

  • What your process?

  • Do you start with the whole?

  • Do you start with some melodies, with some small idea?

  • PHILIP GLASS: It can be anything, really.

  • But a lot of it is detail.

  • I was watching my-- I have a 14-year-old son that

  • was drawing a drawing the other day.

  • And he was doing the tiniest little lines.

  • He just took his time and just put all the lines

  • that he wanted to.

  • And he-- I could see he was getting

  • obsessed with some detail.

  • And that happens in music too.

  • And now, particularly, I'll write a piece.

  • And I'll write music.

  • And I'll hear it the next-- I'll go back and play it

  • the next day.

  • I'll play it on the piano or look at it.

  • And I'm not sure I got it right.

  • The problem is that I hear it right.

  • And the biggest problem is, am I writing down what I heard?

  • And once I write it down, I'm not sure anymore.

  • Because the evidence of the written music

  • can be compelling, but it might not be correct.

  • And one of the biggest problems that I have

  • is, am I writing down what I hear?

  • And I'm not sure.

  • I do my best.

  • I think everyone has a problem.

  • I hear-- I listen to the "Grosse Fuge" of Beethoven.

  • I'm not sure of some of those notes.

  • Maybe he didn't hear them either.

  • I don't know.

  • But you hear that in other people's music, don't you?

  • Or are you a musician?

  • AUDIENCE: I wish.

  • PHILIP GLASS: Yeah.

  • AUDIENCE: A very poor one.

  • PHILIP GLASS: But you can hear things.

  • And you say, I wonder if that-- I don't know.

  • OK, I'm sorry we ran out of time.

  • MALE SPEAKER: No, this was such a treat.

  • We really, on behalf of Google, really

  • want to thank both of you for the wisdom you shared,

  • the performance.

  • It was really special and meaningful for us.

  • Thank you so much.

  • PHILIP GLASS: Thank you.

  • [INTERPOSING VOICES]

  • [APPLAUSE]

BRADLEY HOROWITZ: Hello, and welcome

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