Explorations

Trace the arc of elevated thought, idea and vision.

Beginning naturally with the commonplace, it rises above the mundane, the uninteresting and the stasis of  complacency to transcend expectations of understanding.  It seizes the moment creatively, if at all possible, and renders a concrete link to the experience through visual art media, the written word, or musical sounds, to suggest only a few examples.

Then, as is natural, that heightened awareness becomes conversant with the everyday in ways that popular diversions and entertainment can not, speaking, as it does, to the larger themes of spiritual life and the human condition.

Range of Meaning

Interpretation need not be constricting or absurd.

Perception and experience may be directed internally and externally.  In the case of sound design and non-linear musical fabrication, the composer can appeal to both the appreciation of the external environment as a whole, and to the inner world of the listener as well.

The total effect contributes to enhancement of both atmosphere and mood through sonic imagery, and respects the experience and imagination of the listener.

Resonance

Sound is the language of imagination.

The listener who perceives the vision of a musical work as well as its compositional and instrumental elements absorbs its existential and spiritual meanings.

Spirit

Often, expression sums up experience in terms of content.

Art and experience exist in the context of history, tradition, and culture; expression belongs to the artist.

Feel

Cultural arts given over to excessive, subjective emotion are always on display.  Those who deny they exert an influence have reasons for deception.

Emotional reserve is at odds with such perspectives; classical restraint appears distant, cold, and suspect, because the nature of these attitudes is clearly motivated by something other than outward appearances and ideas in common currency.  This appears truly radical in a climate of reactive and immoderate emotionality.

Yet one need only consider the ease with which affective consciousness may be manipulated beyond an individual or group's awareness or control for dubious ends in order to appreciate art that appeals to the spiritual faculties of reason and free will.

Word, Visual, Sound

Speak and listen, see and hear.

What one may not express, another may reveal.

Processes and Expressions

Experience, contemplate and consider, assemble materials.  See where they lead.

Allowing these assembled materials to determine the direction and scope of a work, particularly a sound composition, speaks to the issue of control, and to the extent to which perception on the one hand and ego on the other determine outcomes.

The former manipulates subtly, and moves with the work to bring it into being of its own; the latter exerts force and pressure towards a predetermined end.

Very few follow the first path, the way of the artist.