Imagery and Symbol

The observer of art apprehends meaning in visible expression and movement; the listener senses significance conveyed by tone, pattern, and auditory imagery.

In each case meaning is a part of larger connections, both cultural and personal, that arise from the past and are carried forward into the future, enlivened by human perception.

Long Moment

Lose track of beginning and ending.

Compose works that create a palpable sense of timelessness, utilizing sonic structures that contribute to sustaining that feeling.

Facility

Indiscriminate impressions reveal nothing and lead to no conclusive ideas.

Yet any impression may prove revelatory to creative imagination and judgement.  

The Real

Free the perceptions and attention to experience follows.

Consider distinctions between arts that distract and arts that enhance experience.  Musical compositions that turn the attention toward clarity of awareness will do the latter.

The Long View II

A composer may begin anywhere and go anywhere, particularly if guided by vision and principle and willing to put forth the effort required to develop and progress over the long run.

In the world of the arts it makes no difference if inspiration strikes suddenly, as it sometimes does, or if, as in my experience, the work evolves over the course of many decades to become what it is.

There is no alternative to devotion, and no substitute for following the way of the artist.

Intention and Impression

Art may be a barrier as well as a bridge.  As propaganda, it manipulates; as academic pretension, it obfuscates, often as a gambit to deny the self-evident for less than honorable purposes.

Intelligent listeners and observers owe no allegiance to such things, confident in their perceptual acuity and personal knowledge of cultural history.  Human nature will be as it is, while art, music, literature and other works of merit communicate directly, with integrity, to all who are capable of setting aside prejudice to give rational consideration to aesthetic experience.

Reflection and Reflex

In any media, the superficial is initially of paramount importance.  It is the instantaneous impression, the sudden sense of an image and the expression of reality it offers that communicates with force.

At this first critical moment, the percipient does more than observe, and projects emotional interests or needs and a fund of personal information upon the art form as an object of interest.  This may be seen as something of a poetic, or romantic, moment of interaction.

Then, given the receptive viewer or listener,  it is the content of the artistic work that sustains such involvement.  Thus much depends upon whether it is the audience, the personal ego, or the art to which the artist is devoted.