Insistent Disturbances is representative of my compositional process at this time. In this work, I began with a global plan that defined a musical shape and then immediately developed pitch material to support my original global perspective. But as I developed local level material, I began to modify the overall structure of the work. In other words, these two opposite approaches give and take for the sake of drama. While composing this work, I was overwhelmed by the amount of tribulation in the world. Like many people, I often feel like an outside observer of events that directly impact my life, and (as in the creative process) these events generate a struggle between my affective and cognitive minds. Just when I begin reconcile these two forces, another dramatic event occurs in the world, and the human process begins all over again. Insistent Disturbances was written in 2003.