In the beginning, around January 1967, Paul Haines, a friend who had
written pieces for the back covers of many albums I had been involved in,
sent me a poem. It fit mysteriously with a piece of music I was working
on, DETECTIVE WRITER DAUGHTER. When I told him how amazing this was, we
decided to write an opera together, or rather, apart, as he was then living
in New Mexico and about to move to India. The term 'opera' was used loosely
from the start, an overstatement by two people who didn't have to watch
their words. We ended up calling it a chronotransduction, which was a word
coined by Sherry Speeth, a scientist friend of Paul's, although we still
call it opera for short.