Vision and Risk

With authentic change, unexpected opportunities arise.

Those capable of expressing these cultural phenomena will be the first to recognize and realize them.

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Singularity of Form and Content

Ubiquity and saturation have reduced all media to a nugatory state.

Feigned interest is the rule of the day.  One can no longer say, such and such a thing is "marvellous", or "unique",  Availability and repetition renders even the finest forms commonplace, mundane, and, to some extent, regardless of quality, banal.

Those seeking authentic representations of experience must discover expression that is sui generis, uncanny, unexpectedly original, and transformational.  One must go far beyond externals to do so.

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Elevation and Declining

There are things within the power of the artist, and there are things that are not.

Self-reliance, control, and action are within the artist's power.  The failures of cultures and societies are not.  The artist observes, creates, and expresses.  All else in in flux, and it was ever thus.

Search and Discover

Observe appearances, recognize realities behind them.

It is the uncanny that is at once familiar and yet strange, alien, and unknown.

Strange Tales

There are those who suggest self-expression is not a "right" and should be "controlled".

In one direction, horses are hauling manure; in the other, they are being bred for war.

Fire, Fix, Pose

There are uncanny aspects to contemporary experience.

Where cultures lack common subtleties of perception, and these qualities are suppressed within the social order, any heightened sense of reality beyond the mundane is stifled.  Those experiencing the transcendental are silenced.  Dubious materialist beliefs are held unassailable, and promoted with imperious ardor.  Still, those who most strenuously hold to such ideas claim to be so intellectually weak and helpless that they must be "protected" from perspectives they reject and denounce as a matter of faith, because these points of view make them afraid.

Dynamic Projection

Rather than be deceived by appearances, the critical mind observes with patience.

Some artists apply technique and medium to conceal, others, to reveal what can neither be seen nor heard directly, but nonetheless grasped intuitively.

Distant Note

In Lovecraft's story, strange music emanates from a room on Rue d’Auseil.

My perspective is that what is generally accepted to be "music" exists within the dull confinement of expectations and conventions that may be consciously put aside. Beyond these, consciousness begins to perceive sonic tones, patterns, and their combinations in novel, interesting, ways, these being more or less suggestive of the uncanny sounds the author describes. Yet the total effect I am most interested in is one of elevated perception in an aesthetic sense, something different, but not alien to, the sensibilities of Lovecraft and other artists of that particular modern period.

Technology, Sound, and The Uncanny

An inquisitive nature will not be satisfied with partial awareness.

Beyond artistic meaning, the aesthetic sense may discern phenomena without apparent connection to temporal and physical events. As the sensitivity of various digital technologies demonstrably renders a number of peculiar elements, particularly of the type termed atmospheric, into clear forms that would otherwise have gone unnoticed, the artist as composer may expressively exploit those preternatural perceptions that come within the scope of consciousness through aural compositions.

Incidental, yet unaccountable, impressions of this order of reality inform all the Black Mountain School recordings, and are ultimately bound up in their origins.

I simply ask, why would one choose to do no more than those things that have been done before?

Mystery in Reality

Partly recognizable, partly outside experience altogether: this is the experience of the uncanny.

The artist can, with effort and conceptual vision, create such experiences.  For the artist as composer, the elements of sound are at play.  I say sound, not music, for the simple fact that all the elements of music are so familiar as to be without effect.  Rhythm, melody, harmony, etc., are known quantities.  The nonlinear sounds of environments in situ hold meanings within tone, shading, and movement that are not so easily recognized and perceived.

These are my interests and goals, the sounds of reality, contemplated and aesthetically stylized as listening experiences beyond the temporal and mundane.

Hold Horizons Forward

Authentic expression of vast force overwhelms.

The artist as composer must act with restraint, capturing and sustaining the real dynamics of tone and color that elevate consciousness. Bombast and blather are modes of weakness, reinforcing impotence and inadequacy; the greatest potential is realized by drawing together and fully articulating the widest possible configuration of sonic forms and energies.

Beyond, Within Earshot

As the artist may see, so the composer may hear.

It is not possible to measure the immensity of variation in such perceptions.  It is not possible to say, with absolute certainty, that there is no more to experience than the mundane and temporal world.

Listen for shape, color, tone, movement and spirit, and hear more than mere sound.

Art as Contradiction

Curiosity is a driving force in the arts and sciences.

Complacency and apathy assure diminishing of consciousness; this is manifest in cultural decline. Measure what is known against what can never be known. Search, discover, experience, express.

Open the hidden gates.

Sound Expression

Many make "statements". Few of these are of any moment.

It is a short step from poetry to philosophy; from there, the sound of being is all encompassing.

Recall

Seek the unknown, unseen, unheard.

Imagine, and find the atmospheric sounds that cannot be imagined. Make them real. Listen, and hear. 

Past Party City

Observe that rhythmic sounds are typically of short duration.

These are expected in music, with longer compositions lasting a number of minutes, briefly engaging the listener's attention.  Consider, then, the prolonged rhythms of sound as they evolve over time, between morning and night, and over years.  These, too, can be made manifest in compositions and recordings, but they are rhythms as a manifestation of sounds other than those given to be musical.

Supersensory Impressions

Open the inner ear beyond the common and easily recognized sounds of the day.

As a consequence, expect to hear the extraordinary, what some might call the uncanny, even the paranormal.  These are sounds outside the spectrum of mundane experience.

Culture and the Environs

Go far.

From a distanced perspective it is clear the "culture" surrounding entire populations may reflect individual taste and interests yet be devoid of a single original impulse or expression.

This is vanity and complacency, indicative of a loss of vision, a failure of the spirit of reason and inquiry, and vapid self-indulgence.  One must go beyond, even into the uncanny and unknown.

High Strangeness II

It is said that pursuit of poetry leads to philosophy.

It seems to me that pursuit of art tends toward the mystic; pursuit of sound tends toward the uncanny.

Will, Fate, and Other Things

Notes are always essential for any artist.

If the artist must be an island, it will be so. Civilization must be given the written word or culture cannot thrive through transmission of idea, image, thought, instruction.  These exist from one artist to another, across time and space.

The Notebooks of Albert Camus are recommended to artist and discriminating reader alike.