Week 35 9/1/19

Creativity is far more rare than commonly understood.

This is because there is value on the one hand, and price on the other.  What is the cost of freedom in a free culture?  What is that which is priceless worth?

Week 18 5/7/17

Many find "ambient music" desirable as a retreat from the stresses of contemporary life.

This is worthwhile as a beginning of understanding.  Plainly, we are conditioned to certain ideas that produce expectations of life and our place within it. We expect "intensity" and it is expected of us. We expect "extremes" and believe them to be "normal" within the scheme of things.  But this is a kind of programming that is deleterious to elevated states of being and consciousness.

It is necessary to discern what stresses in our experience lead us to clearly appreciate the cultural expressions that directly oppose them.  Gaining a fundamental sense of such things, rather than ignoring them in a specious "quest for authenticity", makes perceptual change permanent, rather than simply possible.

Ambimusica.com

Vanishing Futures

There is no "global culture", a fabrication.  Observation and reasoned analysis confirm this.

Any promotion of multiculturalism as meaning other than shared values is a form of ideological manipulation with an agenda anathema to forward progress of civilized life. Simply observe.

Bell in the Fog

One who recognizes objective reality and deals with it accordingly creates with visionary clarity.

The worst circumstances are nonetheless actionable to such an artist. Corruption, like every element of culture, increases until it exceeds its boundaries, and thus its possibilities, then grows weak and declines, sometimes precipitously.

Whenever possible, act; when action is not possible, gather strength.

Grasp of Reality

Historically, art directs attention and reflects cultural direction.

Dictators and tyrants have always punished artists with whom they were in contention, but it is only since the twentieth century that such base, evil impulses have become pervasive in a general culture overseen by internationalist media promoting global conformity of thought.

And thus it is that the artist rebels against a new dark age.

Undetermined

Music is everywhere.

Yet musical culture, with its myriad facets, has vanished, absorbed into a single, all-encompassing media perspective.  The term "rock-star" is now used as an adjective that has nothing to do with music; living examples number fewer than a dozen, and less than a handful of these are genuine, consequential artists. The dead bury the dead.

Ultimately, the artist must shoulder the burden of the real, wherever it leads.

Late and Soon II

Culture evolves with the speed of communications,

Accordingly, developments of ideas and techniques that once took centuries now run their courses in years or decades. Yet when communication is instantaneous, such ideas can be dismissed as having no value within minutes, and all the more so when understanding is predicated upon mere superficial engagement and shallow, or failed, thought processes.

These facts must not escape observation, and consideration must be given equally to an additional truth: regardless of how quickly information moves, ideas, techniques, and creative efforts may still undergo developments that take years, decades, and centuries.

The Ethereal and the Unexpected

Superficially, one hears style-- rhythm, percussion, instrumentation-- thus, music.

But, in terms of sound as aural phenomena, this is but an infinitesimal, though delusively ubiquitous, set of elements.  Those who perceive with vigor understand that the value of such things as texture, color, shading of tone, evolution of auditory imagery and nuance of movement, to cite a few obvious examples, vastly exceeds the quality of interest generated by bland repeated patterns (and puerile bombast) common to generic music, even in the widest diversity of its manifestations.

Rather much is made of the idea that "the internet" constitutes a watershed event in human culture and consciousness, and no doubt it is so as a medium of communication.  Consider, instead, the idea of cultural content surpassing that heretofore experienced, to the same degree that the digital domain surpasses that of the dominion of the printing press.

If One, Then Another

Technological advancement implies perceptual change.

Beginning with the individual and personal, understanding may expand on a grand scale. Novel ideas, experiences, and intensity of communications undo limits on the imagination. Things previously known become starting points, rather than ends.

For the composer, these things suggest the exhaustion of cultural norms and the struggle for means of expression concomitant with a transformation in listening awareness.

To Listen, To Be

Human character is revealed in various ways, among them word, deed, bearing and attitude.

Contrary to most popular received wisdom on this subject, consciousness and identity are profoundly shaped by arts and culture.  Nature and nurture play separate roles, as do politics, economics, and the forces of history in the human condition, yet the personal and individual are directly influenced by the arts in their myriad forms. To pretend otherwise is delusion.

Yet one listens, but does not hear; one absorbs, but does not deliberate, one chooses, but remains in the dark about the possibilities.  Even so, to consciously gain awareness beyond such limits, states, and circumstances is to move from the shadows into the light.  And it was ever thus.

When the purpose of art is a contemplative one, the higher its ideals, the more beautiful its sounds and visions, and the greater the meaning to be found in its representations, the stronger, deeper and wider the growth of personal, cultural, and spiritual experience will become.

Cultural Flux

Change is continuous, with ideas and their associated activities intersecting myriad others at all times and places.

Thus, in artistic efforts, it is wise to apprehend the realities of opportunity and potential in expression.

Works will be, to some extent, grounded in contemporary settings while also possessing timeless qualities. Their meanings will be accessible according to the cultural receptivity, or lack thereof, for artistic representations reflecting the values of the one or the other.

The only real choice, always, is that of integrity and authenticity of gesture; anything else is nothing more than a selection between false appearances.

Uncertainty of Beauty

Observe the course of the history of Western music, consider its developments, and give regard to the effects of widespread global influences over the past century.

The convergence of diverse forms leads the composer and listener to myriad choices, and ultimately to realizations, whether intentional or not, of broader perceptions and more refined artistic goals.