Sword and Shield

The first necessity is freedom of the individual.

Civilization and culture do not simply "exist" any more than they merely "happen".

Marrow, Nerve, Light

Ideas have consequences; causes produce effects.

The most dangerous conflicts are not always won through armed combat.

Concealed Energies

Let there be no confusion: it is the artist who defines art.

Those who say otherwise have other agendas; those who allow their art to be defined by others may be many things, but they are not artists.  The likes of these are ubiquitous, found everywhere from print media to "web presences", all embraced by "endowment" managers, cultural nabobs, academic sycophants and political bureaucracies.

I, like other artists, define my terms.  All the rest exist in a miasma of glorified fraud and waste.

This, too, is what it means to listen, and hear: to discriminate between the real and the falsified.

Lines of Demarcation

One link to Time Past and Time Future is tradition.

Observation of tradition and its elements, as an analytical means to understanding, is neutral in nature. In the simplest of artistic terms, tradition may be expressed through a variety of media according to the sensibilities of the individual artist.  What is not neutral is the artist's attitude toward tradition.

Typical attitudes are those of respect, realistic acknowledgement, or contempt. These are revealing, in that they indicate whether the artist places greater value upon the work, or upon other things such as ego, social status or ideology. The astute viewer or listener cannot fail to detect such expressions and their impact on the total effect of any work.

The Power

Universal condemnation of artist and intellectual portends evil.

There can be no doubt that suppression of speech, perspective, and artistic expression signals the worst sort of calamity, one that drives culture underground and into the wastes.

The artist and intellectual must defend themselves. No one else grasps the force of moral reason that is necessary to overcome the rage of the ignorant and benighted, for whom nothing is acceptable but the extinction of light.

Struggle

Culture must reach beyond contrived ignorance and brute materialism.

There is always a need for enlightened perspectives, even if they conflict with each other.

Civilization, the Known, and the Unknown

The mere subjective moment is not enough.  In terms of elevated thought and being, it is nothing.

Aesthetic perception, the imaginative sense, reveals what ideology will not, that is to say, the ways of cultural, spiritual and intellectual vision are illuminated by art, not by temporal power.

This is the truth of the free world, and it is difficult to attain, essential to sustain, and at all times and by every means it must be defended.

Illusion and Cold Light

As an artist, one may not be devoted to the arts at the expense of life's necessities and long survive.

Yet neither may a consumer culture deny the value of the arts while appropriating the contributions of artists. A society that accepts and condones blatant thievery of intellectual property will ultimately incur the consequences of both brutish ignorance and unrestrained self-indulgence.

Regardless, the artist, poet, and composer will not be silenced, nor the dancer paralyzed.

Media and Psyche

What is generally assumed to be “the media” is a combination of arts and industry associated with printed matter, radio, television, cinema, and most recently, the internet. 

For some, there is no other culture, and thus no original point of view, no past, no sense of curiosity, and ultimately no imagination.  Out of the burden of this shallow, passive and superficial perspective a host of problems arises.

According to the degree that it afflicts a person's relationship with the world at large, such problems may result in anything from minor misunderstandings in communication to heinous acts intentionally wrought by individuals and groups.

This is not "the media", but a construct of what might be called self-sustaining social and cultural errors.  Media is, in and of itself, neutral.  It is no more and no less than a tool, and it can no longer be dominated by one group or agenda. 

The results of this scenario remain unsettled, but bode well for the idea that mediocrity need not be the cultural and social norm it has been, more often than not, within living memory.

Reality, Existence and Art

Chaos and order exist together.

Disordered thinking is manifested in daily living as impatience, emotional instability, clutter, hazard, and noise.  Chaos happens of itself; it is trifling, irrevalent, and easy to perpetuate. 

To create a perspective free of the pettiness of chaos is no small challenge, and requires effort and vision equal to the task.  Beyond the labor and choices involved, it is also an art.

Out of that art comes culture, and its strength.

And Thus We Sleep

Fragmentary nature of perceptions.

Consciousness of heat, cold, scent, sound, emotion, idea, impulse, color, light, texture, mortal limits of time and space.  Sounds of wind in the trees: yours, mine, ours, belonging to none.  Passing thought, offered prayer, creative act. 

The idea, the fact, that some never transcend the narrow limits of self, or complete subjectivity, astonishes, and yet is prevalent.

Reuters News Service:  ...both survivors report the assailant said he meant to kill them because they appeared to be happy people, and there was "no room for happiness in his world".