And the stuff he's doing now is just as exciting as the stuff he was doing then, if not more so. And when you look at the people who are famous, you have to wonder, you have to think, well, perhaps they are interested in fame and fortune. In this country, if you don't promote yourself in a certain way, you tend to be passed over. That's just the way it is. The world, our culture doesn't judge something because it's good or not good, on some level it does, but it also judges it by how hard it's marketed.
Somebody gets all the commissions.
Now in order for somebody to get the commissions, it's because they think that you're marketable, and will improve their sort of commissioning identity, or somebody's writing the grants to get you those commissions. And if you're someone like Terry Riley who's not interested in that kind of world, then you tend to get looked over, seems to me. Lou Harrison is someone who was looked over for years and now he's being embraced by everyone everywhere. I find people like Lou and Morton Feldman and John Cage , and Harry Partch in particular, extremely heroic. In order to be who they were and imagine the music they were imagining, they had to really be comfortable with themselves alone, in a private, very intense fashion.