Passages

Difficulties arise when appearance and reality do not correspond.

A false perception is created to conceal, while the purpose of true expression is to reveal.

Before there is understanding, there must be knowledge.

This is discernment, rightly dividing the real and the unreal.

Thus the composer, engaging awareness, unites the worlds within and those without.

Art as Contradiction

Curiosity is a driving force in the arts and sciences.

Complacency and apathy assure diminishing of consciousness; this is manifest in cultural decline. Measure what is known against what can never be known. Search, discover, experience, express.

Open the hidden gates.

Leaves Turn Upward

Atmospheres speak to the spirit.

Thus the elements the composer chooses from the palette of sounds.

Self, Nature, Sound

Observe the impress of nature upon the human world, as opposed to the common perspective.

Cultures move toward the natural world and away from natural reality according to the attitudes of the moment, but of all artistic expressions, the content of musical works is generally confined to the realm of the personal and social.

Whereas surrealism, pop art, and other emotionally charged forms like abstract expressionism have their musical counterparts in such styles as jazz fusion music, one must look to the classical tone poem and modern minimalism to get even a limited sense of the art of sound being used to convey objective perceptions of the world.  There are few analogous modes of a musical nature for concepts such as those of the "still life" form, landscape painting, or impressionism, because it is a matter of exhaustive theorizing and experimentation to come to terms with such concepts as an individual artist.

But, having settled these matters, the composer is exploring unique and fascinating sonic terrain while experiencing the unprecedented effects of sounds that are at once musical, non-musical, and engaged with human reality and the natural world in balanced measure.

Inevitability

In the moment now, the vast measure of common culture will vanish beyond memory.

This is the culture that serves the purposes of low-level communications, mass movements of groups, general, underdeveloped process of learning, propaganda, fad and fashion, and the perpetuation of a dim, materialistic grasp of the human condition. Its scenarios are untenable, its characters, grotesques.

It reflects populist social attitudes for the most part, and forms a constant, yet fortunately impermanent, aspect of contemporary life at any given point in history.

The artist must remain fixed upon the aesthetic and contemplative goals of expression, and be willing to work arduously, with elevated perspectives and long-term outcomes well-formed and executed, in order to avoid, and indeed, to act freely at a far distance from such banality. To do less is mere waste, while the artist who moves forward with vigor and rationality generates forces that bring the future into being, and does so as a catalyst of change unlike any other.

For This

What will be is present now, though witnessed and heard by very few.

The art of sound is, by nature, outside the interest of what might be generously called "the media-driven consumer".  This can not be an issue for any artist, since it has no bearing upon the creative mind and process.  The composer must experience, perceive, and act accordingly.  Nothing more.

Fragmentation Broadcast

Move forward, out of the recognizable, toward the hidden doorways.

Reach a destination where sounds lose familiarity, become uncanny, nebulous, and can be identified only with great effort. Listen beyond the mundane clamors, and with these perceptions recognize the change in perspective as thought is elevated with awareness.

That is to say, throw off the shackles of subjection to immediacy: listen, and hear.