Saturday, July 25, 2015

Equanimity and Tone

Light, space, and atmosphere are conducive to evolved thinking.


Sound in the aesthetic environment enhances, but does not dominate. This is the nature of refined, or, if you prefer, critical thought, in that it is self-sufficient, highly informed, tempered by experience, and internally motivated. Thus the composer rejects bombast and predictability, holding to a vision defined by intellectual curiosity and perceptual stimulation.

Friday, July 24, 2015

Firing Line Perspective

The ebb and flow of cultural events must be viewed with a cold eye.


 Much more is happening in the creative world of individual artists than brief obsessions with absurd glamour, glorification of the banal, and the prolonged tedium of ideological power struggles indicate.

Creativity is, in itself, expansion of consciousness, and purpose either elevates or limits the gesture.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Mystery in Reality

Partly recognizable, partly outside experience altogether: this is the experience of the uncanny.


The artist can, with effort and conceptual vision, create such experiences.  For the artist as composer, the elements of sound are at play.  I say sound, not music, for the simple fact that all the elements of music are so familiar as to be without effect.  Rhythm, melody, harmony, etc., are known quantities.  The nonlinear sounds of environments in situ hold meanings within tone, shading, and movement that are not so easily recognized and perceived.

These are my interests and goals, the sounds of reality, contemplated and aesthetically stylized as listening experiences beyond the temporal and mundane.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Listening Emerges

Auditory perception evolves with variations in perspective.


The sonic environment is in a state of continual flux, and every nuance has meaning.  It is a language of tone and movement, shading and intensity and character.

Pause, consider, reflect.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

One / Not One

The composer and artist, among others, is forced to view culture critically.


One cannot simply muse upon content and technique, presentation, continuity, and form, or be concerned only with aesthetic outcomes.  Social dynamics generate cultural pressures, and those coercive influences are applied toward conformity of thought and action as manifested in cultural expectations.  One must be open, yet aware, of choices that lead to subjection to societal diktat or autonomy of thought and action-- if one is to be responsible to one's work.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Distance From the Immediate

Solitude must be chosen, and sought out, as it is beyond the general state of affairs.


Clamor limits consciousness and dulls experience, contributing to all forms of decline.  To listen, and hear, is more than an aesthetic principle.  It is a survival skill, an art of being.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Revelation, or Functioning in Shadows

What the arts reveal they may also conceal, and motivations are not always transparent.


There exists a continually-reinforced cultural perspective that insists that the "unselfconscious" or "instinctive", "natural", "authentic" perspective in dealings and interactions with the world is in some undefined way superior to the way of reason and sound judgement.  It is simply a means to creation and control of predictable behavior.

What may be easily termed Enlightened perspective, to the contrary, elevates culture, relationships, the arts, and much more. Being reliable, factually based and conceptually well founded, uniting ideas and concepts in global and historical terms, it transcends the common, narrow and mundane through understanding of human nature and the human condition.  It illuminates with neither condescension nor pretense, and works of art reflecting this perspective undermine and undo, however gradually, unconscious behavioral conditioning.