Evening Traveler

Sounds of the day fade into vague impressions.

Light is altered, and with it the stillness before twilight arrives. Such are contemplative atmospheres. The composer will do well who brings sonic elements together in forms that evoke indistinguishable states of consciousness.

Existential Choice

Art survives.

Culture endures as all things rise and fall. The nature of art is that of a constant state of returning, and the creative act follows knowledge, perception and experience. This is reality, and nothing less.

Forward Movement

Ideas alone are never enough to fulfill the necessities of change.

There must be courage, followed by action, to conceive, initiate, create, and complete what must be done. Only methods and means differ, in grasping the possible and making it real.

There are those who will accept being told what to believe and what to do.

And there are those who will not.

Expression and Knowledge

Vous ne pouvez pas créer de l'expérience. Vous devez la subir.     Albert Camus

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Albert Camus

Almost forty years ago, I read Charlie Hebdo from time to time. It was occasionally amusing, if predictable, as a vehicle through which to épater les bourgeoisie. But no one needs to justify supporting freedom of expression, or condemning evil.  Nor will I.

Real, Surface

Setting and tone manipulate audience attitude.

These manipulations may be subtle or overbearing, convincing, attractive, or offensive and insulting. Unlike the atmospherics of visual media such as film, those of sound will be perceived by the mind's eye of imagination, and the sense of mood they create will impact the listener directly.

The integrity of the composer's inner vision must be sure, and certain, and sustained.

Of Worldly and Otherworldly States of Being

Some sounds reflect the marketplace, the social setting, the spectacle of culture.

Other sounds are out of range of the excitement of crowds, the diversions and distractions of the mass media, and the charms of vicarious emotional experience.

These latter sounds are the ones that evoke atmospheres, provoke questions and speculations, and call up images that elevate consciousness beyond the transitory and the mundane aspects of life.

In and Out of the Abstract

Inevitably, the arc of history appears to end in the corruption of the present moment.

But this is no more than the nature of the present moment.  What is not now apparent continues the arc into the future, even as it exists, within reach, yet in obscurity.