Reason and Art

Imagination and will bring potential realities into being.

It is insight and foresight that tell us who we are and what we can be, rather than having no other alternative than to live "in the moment" and passively accept the status quo.

The Creative Act and Its Double

Discernment is always required in recognizing the difference between appearance and reality.

Individualist expression is essential to art, and demands a devotion to strenuous work.  As a social phenomena, individualist expression alone is highly superficial, facile, and usually inconsequential beyond its sociological and psychological implications.  It should not be conflated with art, as is often the case, but viewed as another matter altogether.

An artist's work speaks for the artist, and for itself.

Displacements and Altered Perspectives

There is a balance between the desires of an audience and those of the artist.

Either may move or be moved by art. At issue is always the extent to which the one may move the other, as in the dynamic of the stone in water.

Pop Spoonful

Media is not Culture.

Media does not surround Culture.  It is not possible.

Culture surrounds media, and Culture cannot be captured.

Continuum and Flux II

Consciousness, to the extent of human knowledge, is a rarity in the vast universe.

What we live, know, come to know, and express has value. And it is only a beginning.

Inside, Outside, Over and Beyond

Create art using sound.

To listen and to hear is to experience sound in ways both active and passive.  It means to be fully conscious and also to apply that focus toward sensory perception on the edges of the unconscious mind, that is to say, to develop awareness of sonic events that are not direct and obvious, and that for the most part go unnoticed.

Expression then becomes essential, being the means by which to express the differences between appearances and reality, because the world is apprehended and defined by both.

Exercise VIII

Identify a continuous source of sound.

Give attention to the sound and the surroundings until no longer conscious of the sound.

Recognize, to the extent possible, the moment of becoming conscious of the sound again.

Analyze and note the differences in (1) the quality of sound and (2) the nature of subjective and objective perception each time the sound re-emerges into consciousness.

As in any exercise, make these steps habitual in the pursuit of creative, critical acumen.