“Since I was a little kid, I was interested in figuring out other people and why they did the things they did. Even when I was doing purely instrumental work, I always thought of the melodies and the form as a kind of interplay between characters. Different forces in the piece, maybe chords, were working with each other or against each other. I was putting human dramas onto this music all the time, even if I was the only one who ever knew it.”