Tone of Being

Certainly it is understood that music does not imitate nature, but is based upon symbolic knowledge that is applied through learned behaviors in various forms and musical genres.

But I am interested in taking note of the perception of sounds as they occur in diverse settings, both natural and "man-made", and creating works that complement the ways one actually encounters and experiences sounds, that is to say, by hearing passively in ordinary circumstances, yet simultaneously being able to take time to listen actively and contemplatively to the unique character of atmospheric environments as well.

Coarsening

Noise, chaos, nonsense, and ignorance contribute to sensory failure.

To be conditioned to anticipate bombast and extravagance and melodrama is to lose perception of the subtle gesture, the minor alteration in tone, the modest change in nuance of atmosphere.

But perhaps that is the point.

Singular Atmospheric Perspectives

These compositions represent impressions of sounds realized in solitude.

Contemporary culture, as idealized by communications media, actively opposes such perspectives.

Portrayals of everyday life as a constant, interactive immersion in the lives of others are patently untenable and dehumanizing.  For reasons that are obviously commercial and political, people who conform to such thinking and create such conditions are easily led to dubious, even infantile, cultural fads and obsessions.

To pause and contemplate life with a moment's solitude is to resist the transparently false.  This, from my perspective, is a critical purpose of sound and vision.

Antipodes

The romantic desires and expresses.

The realist perceives, and, in expression, reflects.

Sound as Art

The visual arts convey idea and emotion through representations to the sense of sight.

Simply put, the composer does the same thing through sound, not by adhering to the principles of music as they are commonly understood, but through arrangement of sonic elements according to aesthetic variables.

It is a method primarily concerned with the perception of sounds according to any number of environmental or atmospheric perspectives that change with movement or the passage of temporal events.

While it is not reasonable for any artist to expect a landmark revolution in listening to take place in the public imagination, and particularly one that will make compositions of this nature accessible to a broad audience within the course of his or her lifetime, it is nonetheless essential to produce such works, and thus set the stage for their appreciation.

Journeys Near and Distant

Listeners recognize meaning.

The composer means to communicate, to convey expressions of experience.  Some will listen, and hear, and know, with the inner ear.

Life's Blood is Not Free

What is taken for nothing is worth just that: nothing.

It is the way of the artist to be responsible to one's work.  The alternative is to imagine life with no more art, with nothing left besides billions of "free" relics of a time when artists and musicians were treated like human beings.