Some Confusion

The obscure may ultimately be revealing.

Rightly understood, the mind and individual range of perception are sources and origins of creative power. But judgments of this nature cannot account for all forces in play, nor can the commonplace simply be subdued and brought to bear upon expression without depth of understanding.

Many things are ultimately beyond the scope of mere intellect, and there are many people who are highly, yet poorly, educated.

If It Is Possible

Art requires thought.

Initial impression communicates very little; superficial responses communicate even less. Ignorance of aesthetic principles and purposes are commonplace, so to accomplish anything is to achieve much.

But art does, in fact, communicate far more than merely that which is already known.

Think, Again

The artist says, I will make you see.  The composer thinks, I will make you listen, and hear.

One creates the future by setting aside both preconceptions and personal dogmas.  It cannot be otherwise, and it is an individual act, not a matter of social conformity.

This is the meaning of the modern, not the destruction of Time Past, but the opening of the mind to Time Future.

Find the Key

Every element of a work must contribute to total effect.

This is true of art, and life as well. Cause yields effect, and may be directed. Nothing is "random".

Direct Experience

Connectivity is not creativity. Not by a long shot.

Effortlessness renders expression dubious, spotlighting its impermanence and eviscerating its power.

If my concepts are not given due consideration, if my music is not in your ears, I accomplish nothing, as far as "connectivity" and other such claptrap goes.

And far more than wasted effort is in progress; here, now, and at all times, one must move forward.

Promoveo, promovi, promotum.

Approaching Terra Incognita

Consider "objective reality" in terms of limits to perception.

Understanding this, attend to what may be seen, heard, focused upon, and expressed past those limits. Here are visions lit by sunlight and fire, symphonies stirred out of desert sands.

On Towards Morning

Pop art and popular culture communicate a broad spectrum of ideas and emotional perspectives.

Still, one must look beyond the merely material, the superficial and concrete:

 Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκίας.

Disconnect

With the realization of loss, one seeks what is missing,

Freedom of experience is grace; freedom of expression is lost upon those without it.

Composer as Medium

Perceive, conceive, express.

Work is revelation, and not to be imposed upon.

Lines of Demarcation

One link to Time Past and Time Future is tradition.

Observation of tradition and its elements, as an analytical means to understanding, is neutral in nature. In the simplest of artistic terms, tradition may be expressed through a variety of media according to the sensibilities of the individual artist.  What is not neutral is the artist's attitude toward tradition.

Typical attitudes are those of respect, realistic acknowledgement, or contempt. These are revealing, in that they indicate whether the artist places greater value upon the work, or upon other things such as ego, social status or ideology. The astute viewer or listener cannot fail to detect such expressions and their impact on the total effect of any work.

Reason Amid Riot

One cannot number the voices that go unheard, or the expressions missed in the clamor.

Yet culture endures, much of it outside the narrow straits of media and commercial enterprise.

Outside Perceptual Limits

Reveal the unseen and unheard.

Elevate the real; eliminate the false.

Adulteration

The artist who is not self-reliant compromises the work.

Those who demand that art and music be free need not be surprised when they are given propaganda, and ultimately realize that art no longer exists.

Surrender Nothing

It is not modern culture, but the contemporary critique of culture that is fraudulent.

As criticism, it is not put forth with the intent of encouraging elevated expression, but as a vehicle for seizing and controlling cultural perspectives, and thereby to do the same with wealth and power.

No one understands this fact more than artists who have lost both autonomy and all means of support while "works" of no value beyond their dubious meanings as sociopolitical "statements" are lauded by the so-called intelligentsia.

Torn Curtain

The legitimacy of  'art' is always in question.

This is a means of control.  The artist may conceive and devise unprecedented concepts and methods, by which to produce entirely original works, yet until and unless such works are deemed "legitimate" or "authentic" by one or another respectable source they are of no significance whatsoever.

The fact that this recognition almost invariably takes place through either social posturing or some form of political maneuvering should never be lost upon the creative individual.

Singular Variations

Perceptions suggest and evoke reasoned responses as well as instinctual reactions.

Conversational tone changes, ideas are visualized, words chosen, and the imagination expressed in every medium.  But the clamor is ceaselessly for "free art", and so are art and artists valued.

Breaking

The arts must reject conformity and assert independent visions from positions of strength.

Totalitarian cultures cannot tolerate opposing perspectives, because they are incapable of defending absurd ideas and asinine viewpoints.  What critical thought and insight reveals, against the weight of risk and threat, courage and integrity demand the arts illuminate.

Moment

It is a simple fact.  Art is highly significant and valuable.

One cannot debase the contents of consciousness, whether personal or cultural, without serious consequences.

Substance, Shadow, Consciousness

So-called "dark" visions and expressions are but infantile, morbid extravagances.

To place greater value on technology than upon the ultimate potential of the human mind is an affront to humanity itself. Such a false perspective is one of infinitely greater hazard to freedom, culture, and society than any demoralized view of the human condition can possibly be.

Impression, Sensation

Music and memory are most often associated with time and place.

More interesting to me is the idea of removing such associations while enhancing mood of place as well as state of mind.  While the imprint of music "sets" a mood, whether at a dance party or in the soundtrack to a film, compositions crafted to stimulate, rather than dominate perception provide a context conducive to clarity in thought and feeling.

Cross the Gulf

Elevate tradition with modern perspective.

For the artist as composer, this is the sound of the future awakening in the past.

One must transcend the ignorance of the times that corrupts the beauty of darkness.

Empty, and Fill

To gain audience, repeat the known, the expected, and the understood.

To express vision, reveal what cannot be seen or heard, evoking mystery and the unknown.

Word Virus / Image Virus

Media as controlling force repeats continuous visual and verbal cues that are unconsciously absorbed.

These combine to implant ideas, ideologies, and directions for focus, yet the effect is that individual and group believe they are fully aware and act autonomously.

What is the role of the artist?  It depends upon this understanding, and the degree to which character, courage, and moral reason are developed.

Media Reach

Media recognizes, promotes and rewards all that satisfies its controllers' varied agendas.

But media does not define, grant permission to, or dictate ideas and actions to anyone, including the artist and composer.  The artist who believes otherwise is no artist at all, but a victim of delusions.

Constriction

The artist as free individual gives expression to that freedom.

If that expression is beyond the comprehension of the uninformed, the critic, or the "consumer" of art, this is a cultural issue beyond the power of the artist to correct.

The only course, as Camus would have it, is disdain, and I might add, work. It is the first fact of life for the artist that there can be no expectations, for anything whatsoever.

Imprint and Effect

Observe the levels of technical perfection at which digital programs render artistic products.

Observe, beyond the illusory excellence of contemporary productions, technology suppressing art, rather than elevating creative work.  It is an anonymous perfection, generated by artificial means, and unmarked by the stamp of individuality. In opposition to this uniformity the artist and composer must strike with force of thought.

Distances, Temporal and Aural

Music is more than connectivity to varied emotional states.

Reflect upon how little is done to extend boundaries so narrowly defined.

Time Past, Now Future

View time, hear sound, as perceptual continuum.

This is presence of mind for the artist as composer: past and future surround a single moment, and there is no beginning, middle, or end.  The word "nonlinear" is weak, incomplete.

I call it real life, as experienced and expressed.

Ways of Being and Will to Create

The reality of nature neither speaks nor instructs; its lessons are learned by observation.

Human reality observes, conceives, expresses, and acts. Yet of both realities, only one is always true.

Picasso, Eliot, Warhol, Burroughs

The modern becomes the traditional, and tradition is reconsidered.

Think. Nothing exists without precedent and foundation. Only ignorance is unmoored and adrift.

Permanent Loss

Complacency is a prison.

To embrace innovation in technology without accepting innovation in cultural expression is a complete waste of potential, a contemptible surrender to profound and prolonged cultural stagnation.

What has vanished before reaching fruition can only be imagined; work that will never be brought into being because creative thinkers will refuse to participate in efforts deemed existentially worthless is unimaginable.

The Power

Universal condemnation of artist and intellectual portends evil.

There can be no doubt that suppression of speech, perspective, and artistic expression signals the worst sort of calamity, one that drives culture underground and into the wastes.

The artist and intellectual must defend themselves. No one else grasps the force of moral reason that is necessary to overcome the rage of the ignorant and benighted, for whom nothing is acceptable but the extinction of light.

Struggle

Culture must reach beyond contrived ignorance and brute materialism.

There is always a need for enlightened perspectives, even if they conflict with each other.

Free Hand

The listener should be engaged without being subjected to sounds.

In real-world conditions, listening is selective, and the listener engaged by interesting environmental events by choice.  Composition of atmospheres with attention to the ways sounds rise and fall in the locations and settings of everyday perceptual experiences creates musical pieces that do not imprint themselves upon consciousness, but rather enhance awareness. 

That, then, is the goal of these works. Their relationship to minimalism, "ambient music", classical music, popular music, or even music in general is slight, if, in fact, it exists at all.

Obscure Terrain  by Black Mountain School

Delmarva (Excerpt)  by Black Mountain School

The Voice of Time in Gold  by Ghost Radio Orchestra

Art, Music, and Purpose

These works are produced as imitations of natural atmospheres and human reality within them.

Rather than force sounds into predetermined patterns, I compose by combining sounds and allowing the combinations to determine direction, pattern, effect, and arrangement with minimal interference.

With this understanding, the listener may compare and contrast these works to other concepts and forms of music, with which they have very little in common.

Identity (Excerpt)  by Black Mountain School

Prescience (Excerpt)  by Black Mountain School

Ancestral Shadows  by Ghost Radio Orchestra

Take This Moment

Thank you.

Lead, Or Be Led

I don't presume to speak for artists. They can speak for themselves, as I do on behalf of my work.

I believe reality is far more than that revealed by the senses, and that it can be perceived, by degrees, in the light of reason and free will, the spiritual faculties. Insights and understanding gained in such a way may be artistically expressed, and thus refute the debased assertions of the narrow-minded, the materialistic, and the totalitarian who would dictate the terms of human experience.

Popularity Chasm

Few things impede artistic communication more than ignorance, nihilism, and complacency.

Increasingly apparent are voices of those who parrot absurdities and stridently demand that reality conform to worthless propositions. Art is dead in such collective mentalities, fit only to serve as the vehicle for broadcasting propaganda.

Free expression, rejected out of hand, can never be supported by those who cannot tolerate the world of ideas. The infantile cannot withstand it, as it illuminates things as they are in devastating clarity.

One does not waste time with those who would insist that human nature and moral reason have no real existence, or that there is no such thing as history. They must simply be left behind, as it is only among the utterly benighted that such abominable "ideas" gain currency.

Temporal Movement

Trace the arc of mediocrity and cultural stagnation as it leads to failed perspectives.

Passionate, self-obsessed assertions in the arts do not replace superior ones by virtue of novelty.

Pressure, Manipulation, Clarity, Possibilities

Things perceived in dim light appear distorted and unclear.

Even so, consciousness retains fundamental understanding of objective reality. Perhaps this sense of balance holds in the face of media-generated demands upon human attention, but that may be rather too optimistic a perspective.

 Artistic endeavor in every form has the potential to express this balance, but this can only be so as far as it reflects the honesty and integrity of the individual artist.

Time Vanishing

Any extended observation of culture will witness the diminishing and extinction of certain shallow, once dominant, yet short-lived forces in society and the arts.

Unlike the personal effects of a deceased individual, the artifacts that remain have no connection, however brief or tenuous, to a past reality that is gone as surely as if it had never existed.

This is a defining principle of the arts: to lift perception, and thus experience, beyond the common currency of bombast and poorly engaged ideals, into a realization of abstract, permanent things.

Ahead, Beyond, and Alone

These sound works represent elevation.

Better to explore the silences with genuine curiosity than accept the mundane simply because it conforms to common ideas of being "impassioned".

Beam in the Eye of Imagination

The artist's fund of experience informs expression.

Yet, if all that enters within the perception of the artist is understood to be the appearance of reality, expression will reflect the underlying nature of reality, or else, illusion.

It is the difference between any individual's mastery of life and the "demands" of society and culture at any given time.

Past Shadows

There is no such thing as a tragedy with a happy ending.

Apologists for prolonged cultural and intellectual decline invariably claim the "necessity" of bellicose and "transgressive" reactions to fundamental expressions of human dignity. These arguments are not only absurd, but intentionally destructive.

The good is self-evident, its enemies easily distinguished from the merely ignorant by their slavish adherence to failed 19th Century ideologies, beginning with "scientific materialism" and extending throughout all the mindless drivel associated with it.

Art, Reality, History

The word "narrative" has come to mean any amalgam of lies and propaganda.

This changes nothing. Work, for its own sake, with or without acceptance or respect.

Perception and its Opposite

Light and sound elevate life.

Yet nothing can be done for those who refuse to see and hear, who call day, night, and night, day.

Arts and Sciences in Shadow

Consider the dearth of rational perspectives in contemporary expression.

It is common to see and hear works that express a kind of specious rebellion against a non-existent "oppressor", one generally conceived to represent a kind of traditional, often "religious" authority that seeks to crush some sort of vague "self-realization".  The truth is nothing so romantic.

In point of fact, the true evil is ignorance, and it is manifest as nothing more than a refusal to think, as opposed to acting without consideration for others, or for the consequences of cause and effect.

Philosophy of Composition II

Reason and honesty inform acts and expressions of permanent value.

The statement is a fundamental position, beyond technique and process.