Identity, Image, and Audacity

Typically, diversion and dance come to mind when discussing the purposes of music.

Further consideration suggests the use of music in ceremony and ritual, and for artistic expression of emotion and ideas. Enhancement of concentration and meditative focus, refinement of perception and the reinforcement of contemplative states of mind and being, however, are of far greater importance to those who practice these ways of engagement with reality through expansion of consciousness.

Certainly this is the position of one who composes works in sound to such ends as these.

As Forge Demands Fire

Much is made, in contemporary terms, of the concept of progress.

But progress implies improvement.

Show me this improvement.  Reveal it, that I may believe it.

Otherwise it is only a word to obscure the consolidation of power of the status quo.  This much is plainly evident, everywhere, at all times.  Look and see directly.  Listen, and hear.

Resistance III

Neither oppression nor repression of the arts ever reach an end.

Whether imposed by historical traditions or through contemporary cultural imperatives, subjection to collectivist thinking in academic and political circles will always plague artists no less than historians and all those who strive for true representations of reality. The purpose is simple: to eliminate utterly the power and value of the individual.

And the artist is nothing if not an autonomous free agent.  Nothing more than a lackey, a bootlicker.

Evidence of this is plain and clear.  It is not hidden from sight; one need only look at it directly.

There is no end to it.  Yet even if there is no winning, there can be no surrender, or all-- and this means all that is essential to cultural reality itself-- is lost.

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.

Design, Intention, Representation

When sound mirrors nature, the aural patterns move according to the phenomena of the surrounding world, developing as do atmospheric and seasonal cycles, for example, as opposed to imitating "natural" sounds.

The composer may also follow patterns suggested by other arts and artists in any media, or by, for instance, architectural constructions and the sounds associated with specifically human or cultural ideas, events and environments.

Imitation alone can not bring forth that uncanny aspect of simultaneous strangeness and recognition that makes it possible for the experience of art to elevate awareness.

This demands the force of individual expression.

Reasoning

Philosophy turns on self-knowledge.  Who are we?  How do we live?  These are fundamental questions-- who has time for them, or interest?

Art that reaches beyond the transient and impermanent has an existential purpose.  It breaks ground, suggests possibilities, suggests permanent things.