Week 23 6/14/2020

Always forward.

                                      

That which has been possible in the past remains viable moving ahead, but it is necessary to engage foresight rather than cling to infantile idea and emotion.  

Listen to Be

Information provides understanding, and choices.

Thus the impetus for heightening the sensory perceptions, these contributing to the subtlety and refinement of critical observation, analysis, and judgement.

These are essential tools of the composer's art.

Black & White

Generally speaking, it is not difficult to take perspectives that allow enduring clarity and wide latitude of thought.

The so-called "black and white" viewpoint, denounced by its detractors as "narrow-minded" and "absolutist" is neither intellectually nugatory nor intolerant, rightly understood.  Fundamentally, an attitude that takes absolute ideals into account must acknowledge the dynamic nature of reality in order to be viable, and open to the increase of wisdom, that is to say, to expanding critical analysis and judgement.

Reality is no "sealed system", and its nature is a continuum of change.  One can speak and think with a great deal of certainty, while comprehending fully the fact that it is always possible to know more, and modify assessments accordingly.  Conversely, it is also necessary to understand that the dynamic in reasoning between poles, those "grey areas" between the black and white, is constantly shifting as well, making it clear that their ultimate disposition is in one direction or the other, reality being an ongoing affair not conforming to a static set of expectations.  One cannot simply expect reason, or the lack of it, to negate the truth of cause and effect.  Neither should one be subject to impermanent and biased whims simply to conform to social, political, academic, or artistic norms, regardless of the settings and circumstances in which they occur.

Simply put, it is a mistake, as Cicero stated, "to attempt to force others to believe as we do", and "to believe that success is made by crushing others".  It is possible, indeed, be right, regardless of any and all arguments to the contrary, no matter how cleverly or "passionately" they are proposed against objective evidence and experience.

Find the Key

Every element of a work must contribute to total effect.

This is true of art, and life as well. Cause yields effect, and may be directed. Nothing is "random".

Reason Amid Riot

One cannot number the voices that go unheard, or the expressions missed in the clamor.

Yet culture endures, much of it outside the narrow straits of media and commercial enterprise.

Expression as Disputation

Consider the possibility of irreversible intellectual decline.

Contrast present cultural perspectives with objective experience.

Spark and Means

Technology has its place.  This is not a complex or nuanced proposition, but plain fact.

Technology, in proper perspective, is absolutely subject to human reason and will.  It is, in fact, only as valuable as it is utilitarian, and only useful insofar as it contributes to the elevation and unburdening of the human condition.

Let those who will have it direct their lives defend it if they can, but such arguments are of no concern to free human beings.

Istigkeit

Witness the world in motion.

If the goal is to express the aesthetic, contemplative moment, the composer must hear what the visual artist sees, in both objective reality and in the inner ear of imagination.

Unless and Until

The mind does not process environments in their entirety.  It limits, filters, and focuses.

The individual who is cognizant of the extent to which culture influences awareness and intensity of interest has a broader range of perceptivity, and thus choice, than one who is not knowledgeable in such matters.  This is the essential understanding that the arts can manipulate as well as illuminate.

Cloud-Hidden

At the nadir of cultural decline lies ignorance and apathy and self-absorbed complacency.

Since neither art, nor its understanding, are effortless, intellectual curiosity cannot be neglected by those who would gain the broader, deeper perspectives on life the arts reveal.

This is a critical contemporary issue, and its most odious aspects are intentionally reinforced by the elite institutions and mass media under the guise of "populist" egalitarianism.  Since these conditions are, in point of fact, the direct results of social engineering aimed at producing an anemic, totalitarian, collectivist mentality, the resolution of this cultural crisis is far from certain.

In any event, the work of the artist moves forward, openly or underground.

To Sense

Emotion is energy, whether active or passive.

But emotion is neither vision nor clarity of purpose, and each requires reason.

One must rebel, first and foremost, against irrationality. The artist must see, and the composer must hear, those things that go unseen and unheard in the self-immolation of superficiality and the tyranny of the media-directed spirit of the day, else perish in mediocrity.

The shadows fall in the surrounding world as if the presence of something uncanny announces itself, seizing the attention as if by mystic force.  It is here, an opportunity for shade against the heat, and it appears suddenly and strangely to the distracted mind, as if it is always no more than a mere image, and light years away from common experience.  Lose the facts of reality and lose culture, and life.

Opening

Merge sound and setting.

Within the dynamic of such an atmosphere, possibility and action can converge, thought finds form, and meanings become clear.  Music in other forms serves various purposes, but sound as expression of consciousness in real time opens the doors of perception.

Widening

Huxley concluded that the brain is a filter, one that spares consciousness the shock of perceiving all things simultaneously.

Thus the creative object of the composer is to assemble the elements most attractive to the listener's receptive awareness in such a way as to extend both active listening and passive hearing. As this is the way one perceives sound outside the framework of music, so it may be a different way to bring a composition to fullness in the listener's inner ear.

Glance, Listen, Question

What appears fragmentary may yet be linked to a greater whole.

The separate notes and tones in music, the separate colors of the spectrum, the separate molecules in a cell, the scattering of raindrops and stars and words on a page have an existence unto themselves, it is true.  But in combination they become anything and everything.

Obscure Knowledge

Aldous Huxley viewed the mind as a filter, and its function as a limiting of perception. 

The burden of the creative mind is that in many cases it has fewer such limits.  It is a problem of perceptual simultaneity, of observation and interest given diverse events, whether associated or disconnected from each other, at once.  Rather than approaching reality by ordering it according to learned constructs of, for instance, linear time or spatial relationships, as Huxley's "filter" would suggest, the sense of the imagination is open to more extravagant amounts of stimuli.  Rather than hearing the conversation alone, it is heard within a field of sounds, memories, impressions of emotional connections and intellectual references.  One is not merely reading The Iliad, but is a phantom presence moving among the black ships, hearing the murmur of the wine-dark sea.

The difficult nature of such thinking is easily imagined, and more difficult still is coming to terms with obligations of communication and empathy with those whose hearts and minds and ways of doing things are different, yet equally human and consequential. 

If one would actually create, one might be well advised to create equilibrium, that is to say, to develop effective method of execution, manner of presentation, and works with historical and cultural perspective that offer aesthetic appeal as well.

And there is no compromise necessary in doing so.