Ideas came with explosive immediacy, like an instant birth. Human thought is like a monstrous pendulum; it keeps swinging from one extreme to the other.
When I was 12 years old, someone took me to see Martha Graham. It was nothing like what I thought of as serious dancing and even then I knew I was having a great experience. It was as if somebody was moving through space like no one ever did before.
When I left Europe in 1987 I did so with the thought that my relevance as a composition teacher would benefit from a certain cool distance to certain tendencies I had been observing for several years with increasing disquiet.
And the Blue Angels are coming back to scare the local population. I remember seeing old Vietnamese women ducking under the benches in Washington Square; they thought they were back in the war.
They were singing, Gillette, the best a man can get, with a lot of guys hugging their fathers and sailing and riding bikes. I suddenly felt a long way from the best a man could get and I thought it would be nice to get from there to the best.
Four years ago maybe we thought we were inferior to Brazil, subconsciously we didn't see ourselves beating them. Now we believe in ourselves, we can be on the pitch with any team in the world and think we can win.
Most professional players are their own biggest critics. Some of the things you read in the papers that strike you as bang out of order will already have been thought by the players themselves.
I like the dueling club scene, where Daniel and I fight with our wands. I thought it was a brilliant scene to shoot. I think the end product looked really good.
