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

Week 12 3/26/17

Finished work demonstrates mastery of knowledge, judgement, and skill of execution.

Conceptual sound composition demands process and production equal to the artist's vision.

Ambimusica.com

Time, Now

The warrior, the sage, and the artist have the same existential mandate.

By virtue of every available power, bring Time Future into Time Present.

Exercise VIII

Identify a continuous source of sound.

Give attention to the sound and the surroundings until no longer conscious of the sound.

Recognize, to the extent possible, the moment of becoming conscious of the sound again.

Analyze and note the differences in (1) the quality of sound and (2) the nature of subjective and objective perception each time the sound re-emerges into consciousness.

As in any exercise, make these steps habitual in the pursuit of creative, critical acumen.

Upheaval and Vision

It is nothing to bring about irrationality and chaos.

Only the most arduous efforts can focus and elevate aesthetic beauty out of disruption and turmoil, ignorance and evil.  But it can be done, and it has always been so.

Actionable Intent

For desired change to come into being, it must be created.

Therefore take action, regardless of scope or scale, and cause will yield effect.

Fading False

Without common vision and purpose, there is no culture, but only its false appearance.

What remains is nihilism, centered upon obsessive and bellicose disputation over long-past failures of moral reason and creative vision, ideas rendered obsolete by the test of time.

The real goal of those engaged in conjuring such a state of affairs is one of totalitarian control.

It is the artist who is often the first to realize that the single, essential struggle is one for individual freedom and personal autonomy, regardless of whether society as a whole is capable of it.

Nothing More

Technology, in and of itself, is central to contemporary culture.

Yet it is art that elevates the human condition, and technology is nothing more than a tool.

Exceptional Event Awareness

Take cognizance of those impressions that appear on the distant edge of perceptual awareness.

Sensory impressions of this order may, or may not, be within grasp.  For the composer, these can be indicators of auditory possibilities, just as the nebulous image in the mind's eye may inform the visual artist. These may be considered extramundane events, sought out by very few, but the scientist, poet, warrior, and individual of imagination know how to grasp and reveal them.

The Need for Sound Art

The fish, it has been said, is not aware of the presence of water.

The discriminating listener is constantly aware of the sounds of art subverted by "programming".  It is the same set of generic structures adorned with different characterizations and attitudes of style. The artist must transcend this, and provide the listener the opportunity to acclimate to a different state of auditory awareness.

Yet it is effortless to recognize the uniqueness of these aesthetic atmospheres, composed, as it were, of  "reverse-engineered" representations of perceptual sound environments.