Invisible

Mass media directs mass mentality in every form.

This direction implies that attention is driven towards certain things and away from others. It is as true regarding the arts, especially those related to music, as it is for politics, culture, and everything else.

Hence, independent thought, and the independent artist, are equally essential to life, and rarely seen.

Spells

Those familiar with the cyclic nature of reality understand impermanence, gain, and loss.

History lends itself to foresight, science to progress, and the arts, to enlightenment, even more so than the philosophical perspectives with their degrees of specificity.  It is the individual whose senses are opened through artistic expression, and the individual who must grapple with the implications of the artistic work.

Setting and Psyche

Contemplative space is itself an artistic accomplishment, whether created or discovered.

Noise renders even the most comfortable and visually beautiful place squalid, burdened by intellectual and spiritual neglect.  Everyone has endured this, and it is far too common.

Composer and listener share common bonds, and first among them are goals of elevated experience.

Integrity of Potential

The arts survive.

Decline is a fact of culture.  Ideas originate, prevail, and find their final forms. The arts never reach a state of finality.  To be continually filled and continually emptied out is the nature of expression.

Culture Paradox

Observe the "information society".  Find knowledge ubiquitous, literacy merely functional.

When this plethora of information leads to the assumption that the possession of an internal fund of knowledge is unnecessary, the error is one of profound consequence. Consider only the implications of failed, archaic, totalitarian ideas impressed upon art, politics, and the social order because their outward appearances give the uninformed the specious impression of "novelty". Yet this is of very little moment in comparison to the mass abdication of critical reason it presupposes.

Thus the essential nature of the contemplative, and of atmospheric sound art to enhance reflection.

Wax, Wane

Attainment of intellectual expression is a goal and focus of art.  It is noble, and desirable.

This is because of lasting impact, the shaping of future events, and what might be called the transmission of cultural progress through evolving ideas.

As a perspective this is easily lost upon society, and the momentum of reason difficult to gain.

Observe, Then Question

At no time in human history has music so absolutely saturated culture.

Thus it is taken for granted, devalued, viewed as a "given", without consideration for the labor of the trained musician or the intellectual rigor demanded of the composer, arranger, and songwriter, who are themselves considered marginal figures.