No, they are three completely different processes. In film, I try to really blank out my mind when I see the film for the first time so that I have no preconceptions. Early on in my career, I tried to do all this prep or even read the script and write music, but none of it ever survived. And I realized the best way to go at it was to be as blank as I can possibly be. When I’m writing classical music, it’s much more nerve-wracking because I’m starting with nothing! And I don’t have a picture to drive me on. I am wired now, for 38 years, that I see a moving picture, I hear music, you know what I mean? But with classical, I got nothing, and at first that was totally terrifying. But I forced myself into it, and then something develops, and it becomes very liberating. With the rock music, it’s a whole different process. I mean, I can’t do anything until I get the message.

Having bought the colours, an easel, and a canvas, the next step was to begin. But what a step to take! The palette gleamed with beads of colour; fair and white rose the canvas; the empty brush hung poised, heavy with destiny, irresolute in the air. My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto.

I think it begins as a kind of tension in space.  There’s something out there and it’s waiting for the big bang, and I have to get that into my head.  I have a composer friend in Ireland, and he beautifully said, “I have this scream in my head and I have to get it into the orchestra.  I have to get it into the music.”  But I wouldn’t be quite as dramatic as that.  But I have this tension.  I have this thing that has to be done. And the problem is, you see, once you’ve got the first paragraph down and you’ve got the tone, then the bloody book is written.  All you have to do is fill it in then, which makes it really boring.  I mean I’d like to be like one of those Japanese artists, you know, just go shoop ! and it’s done.  But no, it takes years.

Obviously, it’s different for everyone. And actually there is a difference for each thing I do. But one way it happens is to just move. [ laughs ] I mean, obviously, you don’t just sort of randomly throw yourself around the room. You move with these ideas and sometimes I find that I’ve already got images in my head that I imagine my body in, or sometimes I have sequences in my head. I think a lot of time I’m listening to what comes next because sometimes the body will tell you that. Often I don’t document it too early in the process because sometimes if you forget stuff it’s worth knowing that the things that you forget maybe weren’t worth keeping. The things that have settled are the things that need to be kept because they seem most urgent. I don’t know. I mean, sometimes it’s about going to the studio and nothing happens for a long time and you just sit there and you’re not feeling it. That’s awful. It’s like when you’re writing and sometimes you go to the coffee shop and you’re like, “So, we’ll just see what happens.” And you end up on Facebook. I think the answer to this is… I really think the answer to this is I don’t know. [ laughs ]

I would hope that there’s a recognition that in some way or another it has contributed to the breaking down of barriers. Somehow deinstitutionalizing some of those buildings. They might be workplaces. They might be cultural buildings, where under one roof you have the contemplation of great works of art and the studying of the history of art. That might be linked to a degree of innovation, harnessing technology to a good end. I’m bringing an element of joy and uplift to spirits.

They were the great architects who have gone before. So they were architects like Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright. Of course, they were alive at the time that I was studying. But there were also, for me, not just buildings.