On Friday I gave the first public performance of Another Dimension at SoftSeries, a new concert series I’m directing with composer and friend Melissa Grey. It was an incredible experience—everything I had hoped for and more.

I finished reading The Gift today, and I’m realizing that the ideas in this book are woven through my experience of Another Dimension. The book suggests that inspiration, which comes from a hidden place in the mind, is actually a gift. By treating it as such, an artist can remain gifted.

The original idea, the kernel of inspiration for AD, came from a single conversation with a friend. We were discussing how the addition of a new perspective to an existing idea can change and enhance the original without diminishing it. The phrase “adding another dimension” was used, and that stuck in my brain. It was there the first evening I sat down with my Gameboy to play with a new set of loops. It was there the next morning, as I sat outside a cafe in the clear October air, waiting for a meeting, I worked on expanding the loops created the night before. In those moments I knew that this piece would be called Another Dimension, and that it would push me to explore and expand myself.

Over the next month I refined the loops and shaped the ideas until I had 44 individual loops: 11 each for the four channels of the Gameboy’s sound chip. From there the process of actually shaping the final music, determining the form and length, began. I made recordings during each work session, numbering and reviewing them. Early in the process I thought that AD would end up being a fixed piece, lasting 15-20 minutes. It’s not either of those things.

The gift of the initial inspiration was growing, expanding, increasing its own intangible value. One of the central ideas in The Gift is that gifts belong to a cycle—gifts are passed on, must be passed on, in order to remain gifts. I was reading about these ideas as they were manifesting themselves in my life. AD was a gift to me even as it was becoming a gift from me.

By the time Friday’s performance arrived, I had recorded 29 versions of AD, each different. Every time I play this music there are new relationships, new sounds, new moments. It can never be a fixed form. It is no longer 15-20 minutes, it has grown to more than 45 minutes and feels like it may continue to grow.

The moment that the performance began I could tell that it was going to be special. There was an incredible energy in the room that night. Everyone was engaged, invested, supportive, embracing. I sank into the music, letting it carry me away. AD requires a high level of sustained concentration. I’m standing still, staring at a dimly lit screen, feeling for the pulse, listening to unfolding relationships between the loops while remembering which loops are stored in which slots. I could feel it flowing around me. I could feel the listeners in the room with me.

At a couple of points I closed my eyes, moving between the loops by feel and by memory. I was completely connected to the experience, to the sounds. My fingers moved to create subtle and complex assemblages of the loops. The Gameboy ceased to be a toy or an interface or a simple piece of hardware: in those moments it was my instrument.

Long ago I performed music regularly, playing trombone. I can remember why I gave it up, why I moved on. Recently I’ve come to miss making music live with an instrument. On Friday, for 46 minutes, I had that again. AD will continue to expand and evolve. I will have more of this.

As the music ended on Friday, as I slowly faded the Gameboy volume to zero, I could hear the sounds in the room return. The fire in the fireplace crackled and hissed softly. I could hear my own breath again. There was nothing else. In a room full of people there were no sounds of scuffling feet or bodies shifting in chairs, no throats were cleared, no whispered remarks were made. It was still, with a tangible electricity in the air. I knew that everyone was still engaged. I knew that the gift I had received in a conversation months ago had grown and had been passed on. It had new people to touch, new minds to inspire. I was grateful to have held it for a while.

When the music was finished and the applause had faded I found myself standing at the center of a group of people, accepting compliments, answering questions, demonstrating the peculiar nature of the Gameboy. Their enthusiasm—clearly seen in their eyes and heard in their voices—felt like the gift of AD coming back to me again.

The Gift closes with an extended quotation from Pablo Neruda, which is the perfect summation of these moments:

To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses—that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.…all humanity is somehow together.…

This small and mysterious exchange of gifts…, deep and indestructible, [gives] my poetry light.