Football Season is the fourth “season” piece that I've completed. First came Baseball Season, then Rafting Season, then Hockey Season, and now it's Football Season, which actually maybe I finished third, or even second. But four is a football-y number.

“Season” pieces are my Morton Feldman-y pieces: take maybe one idea and maybe one process, and make it last for about an hour. A dozen or so other “season” pieces are lying around waiting to be completed.

“Football Season” is also the name of a comic strip I started.

I wish we'd played this thing faster and better, but of course there's never time for proper rehearsal. I blame all sorts of people for that, but not me or my musicians. I blame other people: people I've never met, people who linger in the shadows, people who just don't care. You might say it's just the way that our universe was constructed: there's always some little kid knocking stuff down before it's even finished.

“Football Season” also refers to a time of year when people play football. I was aware of that, but what I wasn't aware of is that one of my themes sounds a lot like one of Dave Brubeck's, even though yes, of course I must have heard that piece a few times just as yes, of course I have occasionally watched bits of this or that football game. I feel about Dave Brubeck's music like I feel about football: it's okay, and it involves large people. But this piece doesn't have much to do with either, nor does it even have much to do with Eastern European folk music. I was just sitting there with several little bits of melody when it occurred to me that I could create many variations by adding two or three notes here and there, doing it a little differently each time, making the least little changes. I was thinking of Feldman, and maybe of Robert Rauschenberg. Like pretty much everything else, it was all just a great big accident, and we're just lucky that it isn't worse.