Week 28 7/14/19

Keep to the One.

This expression is associated with the Celestial Way.  It implies honesty, nobility, and a connectedness with the phenomena of existence.  

One has an understanding of these things, or one does not, and one lives accordingly.  

What has this to do with art and music?

Week 19 5/13/18

Some simply accept.

Others expect more, desire more, and do more. They see, they listen, and hear. They create.

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Week 6 2/11/18

Sound intellect is not conferred by academic degrees, but developed by painstaking application of moral reason.

The historic cycle dominated by the collectivist mentality of the past century is coming to a close with the worst of its elements collapsing in full view of the astute cultural observer.  Following this state of affairs, the self-reliant will prosper, and mere propaganda will be transcended by the force of individual expression that will appear in entirely unexpected, visionary ways.

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Week 35 9/3/17

To evoke atmospheres, the composer must minimize the subjective.

The result, in the final expression, is a sense of vibration and the engagement of perception with as little interference, or influence of personal dynamic, as possible.

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Leap

See the world.

Move beyond the limits of irresponsibility.  Be the one to discover what has not been seen, heard, and expressed.  This is self-reliance, existential clarity, and the virtue of contemplative being.

Separation and Unity

Creative thought necessitates many perspectives.

Clarity of perspective necessitates critical and creative responses.  Each implies both, and for the artist each will be revealed and expressed.

Reversals

Hubris engages the pursuit of nemesis.

Thus are fortunes changed in the Greek tragedies, and the mighty decline and fall.

These are cautionary tales of cultural moment and permanence.  In the mind's eye, Icarus against the sun, Orpheus turning at the threshold of the underworld, crying out "O Eurydice, look upon the world I have won you back to!"

The artist must live in reality, regardless of the ways in which worlds and visions might be expressed and represented through artistic works.  To do otherwise invites disaster, arrayed in myriad forms.

Beyond the Present

Necessity demands.

There can be no pretense to the artist's position. One's only recourse in every setting is the truth.

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.

See, Express, or Grasp Nothingness

Art collapses in the hands of the unfinished intellect, the ideologue, and the timid.

This is a failure of vision as well as intellect. A failure of recognizing the human condition, it is disabled further by a lack of critical foresight.  Yet it is sustained by the like-minded, until definitive revolt can no longer be restrained.

Flash, Fashion, Elevation

Cultures are numerous, but share elements and essential forms.

Cultural elements tend to relate to values; essential forms, to permanence and transience.  Last week's news held the attention, then vanished.  Such things as the Brandenburg concertos remain constant. In more visceral terms, so does a recording like "Mississippi Queen", by the rock group Mountain, or a film like Bullitt.

Directed by tradition, strive for originality of expression. Directed by media, passively consume and vicariously engage.  The former reflects individuality, potency, progress; the latter, collective, or herd mentality.  In terms of cultural significance, expressions of both style and substance yield the lasting meanings.

Embrace Falling Night

Sustain and abstain.

These are the choices the composer considers before acting to bring sounds into being.

Waking, Dreaming II

The conscious and unconscious mind perceive according to their respective sensations.

Awake, sensory perceptions are interpreted through the mind's filter of knowledge and experience.  In the altered states of awareness, particularly when dreaming, the mind presents symbols of uncanny meaning to the inner experience of being.

These are visions the modern artist represents with sounds as well as through visual forms.

Context, Meaning, Aural Impressions

Sonic images, like the visual, are symbolic of emotions, ideas, and the spiritual.

Properly understood, listening and hearing convey the vision of the composer, directly and through implication, to the experience of the listener.

Tradition and the Modern

Creative impulse intersects with past expression in terms of universality and the permanent things.

These permanent things retain their vigor and value beyond temporal boundaries. They are the ideas and values reflecting self-evident good in all cultures, and while time may alter their expression over generations, it does not erase them.

Every work of every composer and artist reveals a raw measurement of what they know against the vastness of what they do not know.  In the fullness of time, things that cannot now be perceived will become manifest, yielding more to be imagined.

Echoes of the Future

Consider auditory art beyond current forms.

Music is a medium that communicates with the unconscious; the sounds of myriad historic eras reveal their various cultures in the light of emotions, ideas and attitudes.  The solemn, the frenzied, the simple and the sophisticated reflect in sound the human condition of the times.

View, Focus, Redefine

The creative nature of the artist lends itself to a view of reality through the lens of aesthetic perception.

The creative act draws upon resources and experience in representing a perspective of the real, regardless of the medium employed or the context of the activity.  It is communication that informs concepts, which in turn evoke perception, or vision, if you will.

Painting, literature, sounds and music, teaching, learning, politics, athletics, sculpture and invention-- these may indeed be arts, given imagination, and all the better if tempered by moral reason and clarified by the force of virtue, these being timeless and universal.

Therein lies meaning, and most particularly that of what it means to be human. 

Distinctions

Distinctive compositions bear the impress of the author or composer's vision.

The musician focuses on displays of technique and style; the composer, on self-expression and emotional relevance; the speculative artist or theorist, upon ideas and concepts related to sound, its effects and its revelations in regard to reason and the human experience.

Each perspective reflects a kind of quest.  The first is for acclaim or glory, the second for personal and aesthetic satisfaction, and the third seeks mystery, whether out of intellectual curiosity, a metaphysical turn of mind, a desire for expanding and understanding consciousness, or something else altogether, but beyond the mundane and emotionally subjective.

Encounter, Response

Impression, followed by processes of envisioning, resulting in representations reflecting reality and the imagination.  Such is one concept of art among many.

So cycles of creativity continue, constantly revised, completed, restored, and renewed.  One artist gains perspective in regarding the work of another, and another painting, poem, or musical piece follows.

Ultimately, fully evolved and internalized, the artistic vision moves beyond the traditional into the personal, shaping and shaped by experience itself.

High Strangeness

In folklore, those who experienced otherworldly or haunting music describe it as mesmerizing and overwhelming, and unlike anything experienced in life.

Often described as the most beautiful sound the percipient had ever heard, the common thread in most cases is that it was impossible afterwards to remember the tune.