Time & Perspective Quote by Terry Riley

What sounds like a casual shrug - no plan, just playing - is really a manifesto for a whole way of making art. Terry Riley is describing improvisation not as chaos but as a disciplined state of attention: you enter, you commit, you stay. The “plan” he rejects is the classical ideal of the composer as architect, mapping every note in advance. In its place is a practice where form emerges through duration, repetition, and stamina.

The detail that matters is the body. Riley doesn’t present endurance as a quirky talent; it’s the engine of the music. Playing “for a really long time without stopping” turns repetition into a tool that rewires perception. A pattern heard once is a motif; heard for hours, it becomes environment. That’s the subtext of early minimalism and Riley’s particular contribution: the piece isn’t just the notes, it’s the listener’s shifting relationship to those notes as time stretches and attention drifts, sharpens, and drifts again.

There’s also a quiet flex in “I wouldn’t seem to get tired.” It hints at the altered-state aspect of Riley’s era - the 1960s Bay Area, jazz improvisation, Indian classical influence, tape loops, the culture of trance and expansion. He’s describing a craft technique that doubles as a spiritual technology: repetition as a doorway, duration as proof of seriousness. The intent isn’t to romanticize spontaneity; it’s to argue that the real composition can happen live, in the act of staying with an idea long enough for it to change you.