Strike Counter Strike

Collective idealism can never tolerate art.

But this is an ancient idea.

Art is the expression of an autonomous individual, one who takes a measure of reality and expresses that measurement.  What matters is the discernment necessary to evaluate whether a work is a true reflection or a falsification.

Direct Experience

Connectivity is not creativity. Not by a long shot.

Effortlessness renders expression dubious, spotlighting its impermanence and eviscerating its power.

If my concepts are not given due consideration, if my music is not in your ears, I accomplish nothing, as far as "connectivity" and other such claptrap goes.

And far more than wasted effort is in progress; here, now, and at all times, one must move forward.

Promoveo, promovi, promotum.

Outside Perceptual Limits

Reveal the unseen and unheard.

Elevate the real; eliminate the false.

Simulacrum, or State Otherwise

Popular innovations are few.

For commercial purposes, and particularly in terms of musical forms, the rule is imitation, and thus works and performances are relegated to genre.  In the arts, this is indefensible.

There is no breathing room in such narrow confines. Survival is one thing, and commercial viability is another. But to create, really innovate on an individualistic, heightened level of awareness, one must break away altogether, even if no form exists in which to function.

Such forms, which are as yet unimagined, must be made real.

Wild Cry, Left at Great Distance

It is misleading to suggest culture is in a state of decline.

Popular culture is perpetually in a state of decline, based, as it is, upon the notion of "living only for the moment".  Forward-thinking is anathema in such conditions, which are always characterized by absurd emotionalism, squandered passion, insipid vainglory, and the stale idea that some ill-defined, nebulous "we" are "all in this together".

I am interested in art produced by individuals, for individuals.  In composition, it is always my goal to expand, not limit, and elevate consciousness.

This, at all times, defines my perspective on the modern world.

Order of Progress

The way of the artist is that of the individualistic gesture.

Of course this is existential rebellion, in opposition to the common, the mundane, and the self- righteously complacent everywhere manifest in contemporary culture at all times.

Who will think, rather than be told, will reach beyond the surface of appearances.  For the artist as composer, this is the critical choice between music that now exists and sounds that must instead be brought into being.

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.

Withheld, Obscured

Consider those things not revealed.

It may be necessary to renew the idea of  "secret societies", as they were known in the past, simply to continue to convey concepts of realism and objectivity to those capable of making such judgments.

The artist must trust perceptivity.  For the artist, the eye, and for the composer, the ear, must reveal insights that may be expressed.  This is especially critical in a culture which declines to the state in which one may call day, night, and night, day, only to be celebrated for claiming such "belief".

Promoveo, promovi, promotum.

Between the Lines

As sensory images, sounds may be metaphoric, and so symbolic.

Symbols and metaphors conveyed non-verbally will be associated with universal meanings in many cases, and these archetypes-- in the case of sounds suggesting flight, for example, or depth, or solitude-- bring to mind concepts associated with such things as freedom, mystery, the serene and the sinister, the obscure or uncanny, the pastoral and the seasonal.

Music moves and is moved by culture and the imagination, and the transformational ambient sketches discussed here are designed to immerse the listener in an atmospheric hour for the refreshment and renewal of the mind's eye.

Creation

What is magic?

Whatever begins in solitude.

The babble of the street and the rambling of mixed media recedes to silence and the doors of a wider world seem to be ajar. 

What did Plato know of shadows on cave walls in comparison to "virtual reality"?

Shape-Shifting

There is always a distance between art and audience.

It is sometimes necessary to extend one's perspective beyond the limits of ones experience altogether and perceive from such an unexpected point of view.

In the deck of the Tarot, the card of The Hanged Man.

Phantoms of the Living

In the world of ghosts, we never understand our true motivations, act only on the impulse of passion and selfish desire, and, ultimately, behave as though we are alone, not knowing we are dead.

We interact with others as though they are who we want them to be, never knowing who they really are, because we cannot know ourselves.  We exist in a netherworld of images and ideas that our failures of perception and understanding create for us.

Such a shift in individual and cultural consciousness, while readily apparent, appears to go unnoticed.  We do not speak of such things.

Invest meaning in words that are not understood.  Create, and haunt, an empty prison.