Comprehension, Response

Artistic expression that provokes intense emotion yields little more than singular effect.

Evocation of contemplative response through artistic expression perpetuates elevation of emotion, the intellectual facilities, and consciousness itself, producing expansion of perception over time.

Dominion

Fantasy worlds are nothing if not popular, and thus they are perpetually recreated.

In contrast, the exploration of life and being can never be as complete as any imagined alternative, yet every vision, every work, will be unique in perspective, execution, content, and theme.

Observations Untold

Cultural loss is, to some degree, inevitable.

Visible artifacts remain, and with them, the suggestion of sensory impressions, every one vague and mysterious, beyond reach for millennia.

No finely-considered speculations will recreate "music" of uncertain realities long extinct, but, with the contemplative spirit of the aesthetic sense, it is possible to hear, and express, reflections upon the tonal environments and atmospheres in which these artifacts were conceived.

View, World

Work of artistic merit is of paramount importance.

Nonetheless, the perspective of the artist is revealing.  My own is undeniably United States, Southern, Native American, of Wales, Germany, Great Britain, Appalachian poverty, Protestant Gothic, Stoic Realism, and Eastern European obscurity.  I am one who hears what others see.

Image Culture

The self-reliant and self-sufficient artist is not infinitely malleable.

To such a one as this, oppression and celebrity are equally worthless in the light of the creative act.

These are appearances, nothing more, and neither death nor worldly success diminishes the reality of expression.

The Anvil into Tartarus

Culture will not be chained; it moves at the pace of those who are free to create.

Within living memory, the music industry plunged into an abyss of failure from which it will never recover as a direct result of attempts to define and manipulate culture to the advantage of insular controlling interests.  The result was what remains, an assembly line producing predictability and relentless tedium.

This fact allows for no sympathy whatsoever, other than for generations of artists and listeners who will have very little experience with more than the most shallow and vapid reflections of authentic musical expression.

The truth is simple: one does not control culture, but defends it and allows it to progress according to its own lights.  Yet, even now, this same scenario is unfolding in practically every aspect of culture, including the worlds of art, politics, academics, sports, and, of course, communications media.

Expansion or Collapse

The critical mind regards closely what it perceives imaginatively.

This is the determination of what is real, and what only appears to be so. Only one will yield to the effort necessary to create authentic expression, while the other will conjure the spurious.