On Esoterica

Certain musical forms are so highly specialized as to raise the question as to whether it is the music or the rarefied knowledge related to the arcana of the style that is esteemed. 

Such are the ways of artifice and contrivance, but in any case it is the listener who makes the judgement, and very few listeners care more for exclusionary, byzantine aesthetics than trust their own ears-- nor should they.

A critical listener with well-rounded tastes is capable of appreciating music of all types, and of listening accordingly in the various ways that offer the greatest enjoyment.  The pleasure of music is self-evident, and, the difficulties of composition and performance notwithstanding, it is a chief source of satisfaction to the musical artist to convey that shared sense of enjoyment to the listener.

Mirror and Nature

Art reflects the consciousness of the artist as well as the subject of the work.

The experience of the work reflects something of the self-knowledge of the individual, and, to a great extent, the attitude of the culture that is home to the experience.  Cultural emphasis on the value of the historic past or on a mind-set concerned with envisioning the future will produce differing responses to artistic works, for example.  Each way of thinking has its virtues, as does receptivity to the vision each offers.

Walk Through Walls

Unformed ideas flash momentarily and leave a long after-image.  A school room, a schoolhouse hall.  But there are unspoken ideas, fully formed yet buried beneath emotion and confusion.

Five years, ten years-- these are not lifetimes.  Live with intensity but the facts do not change.  Anything and nothing happens, as days are measured out.  Some live for attachments that will not be, grasp at pleasure, pain, joy, anger, resentments, truths, lies-- real or imagined-- as if these phantoms exist perpetually.

There are times when the only reasonable and appropriate act is condemnation of ignorance, apathy, imitation and self-indulgence.  People who have nothing, as well (and as likely) as those of material wealth, will choose to remain in darkness, as is their right.  The former will do everything possible to appear to be the latter, but it is an intolerable spectacle.

Lao Tsu, it is said, disappeared into mountain mists.