Dane Rudhyar often referred to himself symbolically as a seed thrown away from the old world of Europe to the New World of America. A seed was symbolic of many important notions for him, including sacrifice, decay, death, rebirth, an inner code, a surging upward, cyclic recurrence, potentiality, direction, and expectation. Most seeds are potentially wasted and never reach the process of fertilization or a state of usefulness, yet Rudhyar often regarded this as a purposeful sacrifice. In his earlier life and identity as Daniel Chennevière, the young Frenchman felt increasing despair in a Europe days away from the outbreak of World War I. He often stated that the cultural and moral decay in which he found himself prompted him toward some kind of emancipation from the norms, clichés, and even the morality of European culture, which were weighing heavily upon his shoulders. Unlike Paris, which became associated with ill health and familial deaths on a personal level, and with war, fierce invasion, and struggle on a sociocultural level, the utopian impression of the New World and American freedom at the turn of the twentieth century stood for new ways forward—a counterweight to the European understanding of historical, moral, and habitual necessities. Needing new means to counteract this feeling of decay, Rudhyar declared that “the disintegration of the old European culture and music is still going on, both in Vienna and in Paris. But seeds have escaped from the decaying fruit… . The future of music is in them.”