Heed, Harken

Attention, as a function of attitude, places value on specific things.

To see and hear contemplatively is to give attention to the fullness of experience.  The senses inform, but cannot value; this is a function of will.  Art may reflect and represent, but only the mind and spirit realize meaning.

Download  Prescience:Excerpt 2

© Crucibulum Publishing (ASCAP). All Rights Reserved. 
Compatible with iPod®, iTunes, Windows Media Player and other MP3 players.

 

Realization Through Sound

Atmospheres created artificially range from the minimalistic to the extravagant.

But I am interested in speculative arrangements, and speculation involves genuine possibilities, not absurdities or fantasy settings. There is much more happening in the world perceived by the senses and the mind than it is always possible to apprehend.

Spirits of Place II

Sound environments reveal and establish tone, mood, and situation.

The composer's attitude may be apparent, but it is not of primary interest to the listener.  Nor should it be.  It is the set of conditions the listener experiences through sound that suggests the richness of the composition.

Ear, Brain, Sound, Being

Failure to experience and develop the contemplative spirit is, in point of fact, debilitating.

Contemplation and reflection nurture the imagination, clarify ideas and emotional states, reinforce analytic thought and strengthen independent will.

For music to lend its force to such essential conditions of consciousness, it must be composed and produced in ways that focus on the arrangement of those elements of sound that contribute most to immersive, atmospheric environments, within which the mind is as liberated as the physical body can be while dancing or engaged in athletic activity.

Dynamism

The shadow absorbs in stillness, the fire illuminates in motion.

Certainly there must be impetus to create.  But there must be vision and the application of reason, will, and force.

Murmur and Thunder

Observe simplicity expressed in ways grand and ethereal.

The greatest of things are of the most direct and uncomplicated clarity.

Appearances As They Are

Expression, ranging from the legitimate and real to the specious and fraudulent, makes and leaves impressions on the senses, mind, and emotions.

Just as judgement is false if not based upon facts, so the sound of the authentic experience must have a foundation in the genuine, that is to say, in viable settings or environments, rather than in contrived and spurious ones.

The Searching Ear

Stillness is external and internal, in the nature of living atmosphere and of being.

Observant, listening and hearing impressions great and minute, ordering and analyzing the mundane, the fantastic, and the curious: perceive surroundings, shades of meaning, and attitudes of mind.

Timeflow

What is heard:  the essentials for human functioning, then the media.

What is missed:  the subtle, the environmental, the aesthetically pleasing, the elevated, the uncanny; virtually anything outside the realm of the self-centered.

Fusion

In rich combinations of sound, separate elements sustain their distinctive qualities in relation to each other.

This occurs within the naturally developing atmosphere of any setting, without interference, according to probabilities and happenstance.  The composer, following this model, initiates a blending of tones, patterns, and the like, contributing such modifications as enhance the aesthetic properties of the work.

From my perspective, the less the designer intervenes, the more the "organic" atmospheric qualities of the ambient composition are enhanced.

Personal Culture

There exists what might be called a common narrative, that is to say, a culture of the events of the moment.

Within this cultural narrative are social, political and academic forces, influential in the development of arts and entertainments directed toward establishing and manipulating the public's, and especially the student's, ideas and attitudes.  This is the established milieu of various types of artists.

There also exists, outside these boundaries, an entire universe of experience and expression.

Fire and Frost

One may convey the infinite through understatement.

What can be seen and heard and understood are infinitesimally small in relation to the vastness of reality, and every expression captures but a moment's breath.

The Scent of Water

The most subtle of sounds enhances the most rarefied degrees of perceptivity.

The small things matter, revealing meaning, reviving memory, and elevating imagination.

Context, Meaning, Aural Impressions

Sonic images, like the visual, are symbolic of emotions, ideas, and the spiritual.

Properly understood, listening and hearing convey the vision of the composer, directly and through implication, to the experience of the listener.

Artificial Creativity

To dismiss the artist and deny tradition is the end of culture.

Advanced technology does not endow one with vision and imagination, but with ways and means, for individuality is indispensable, and works of greatness, the achievements of free will and moral reason, come from no other source, as history proves time and again.

Curiosity and Expression

Manipulated experimentally, sound imagery produces diverse results.

It is the artist who must determine aesthetic value in composition and design. Some experimental sounds will be no more than noise, while others yield the elevated and beautiful.

Simply put, one chooses accordingly.

Authenticity

Fidelity is the difference between passion and perceptivity.

Subtlety in sound conveys what extravagance and sheer volume can not.

In Hearing of the Unseen World

At the intersection of life and art is mystery.

Consciousness grasps, and realization measures what can be known against what remains unknown.

Symmetry

Order, proportion, balance.

But these alone are simply appearances, and may be no more than easily contrived artificialities; the aesthetic sensibilities are engaged and expand through myriad perspectives, direct perceptions, and appreciation of imperfection as well.

Message

Every work of art is a communication.

It says, "This is reality, this is the world, this is a story about life and experience."

Advance

The unorthodox envisions progress, yet requires risk.

Whether in theory, approach, or execution, advancement of creative thought through unconventional means may ultimately yield value and significance, but for the artist, the work is its own justification.

Cynosure of Sounds

Chaos to order, and again to chaos, to order, ad infinitum.

Perceived differently: a fabric woven of being and becoming, reality of continuous change.

Ease and Difficulty

Art engages subjective emotion as well as objective perception.

The percipient forms impressions and responds accordingly.  The artist, nonetheless, may choose to gratify the aesthetic temperament of an audience, seek to shock the sensibilities of another, or remain indifferent to anything other than the art itself.

The Depths Beneath the Surfaces

Perceptions must be more than the equivalent of a cursory glance, a brief awareness.

Hearing, one absorbs atmospheres; listening, one interprets and understands.  These are different levels of consciousness than those of moving to rhythms and nodding to beats.

But the way of the sounds, and of their intent, must be different as well.

Cycles and Permutations

Both order and change suggest meanings that may be sensed, if not fully understood.

Things rise and fall.  Change will occur.  The concrete, impermanent and material reflect the ideal, the permanent and abstract.  The artist perceives and represents the moment of experience, and the old becomes the new.

Entity, Abstraction, Existence

Poetic works combine elements of language in constructions of verbal imagery.

As a composer, I am concerned with tones and their juxtapositions, the atmospheric imagery of real environments, and, like certain poets, with the depiction of visions and realities not perceptible by the senses.

Expression, its Dynamics, and the Unexpected

There are those who would govern culture, control its expressions, dictate its directions and outcomes.

They are nameless and many, but such perspectives are ultimately absurd, Utopian, and impotent in the context of reality. What cannot be predicted cannot be controlled over time.

For the artist, it is simple, and cannot be otherwise:  Do what must be done.

Into the Valley

The excesses of musical creativity and performance are easily forgiven in light of the emotional intensity the arts of sound bring to bear upon creator and audience alike.

Left unchecked, such creative impulses may nonetheless drive the artist into grievous error, and the foundations of celebrity subcultures have little in the way of sustaining the spiritual faculties necessary to avoid shallow and absurd commitments to base, often brute perspectives.  One attains the genuine heights without, or in spite of, mere appearances and the welter of human ignorance, even in its most refined forms.

Facing the existential realities, one understands the meaning and purposes of art, considers, and acts accordingly, or falsely, if the understanding is false.  And it was ever thus.

The Furthest Reach

The nature of art has long been considered one of spiritual expression.

For the composer, like any other artist for whom this tradition holds, sound is a material reflection of the greater ideals, and the creative act is a leap of faith.

To Be Free

The fog of noise in daily life may go unnoticed in the course of work and play, but it is no less oppressive.

Freedom is a responsibility that demands individual choice and action, if it is to be experienced at all. Society, politics, and culture play numerous and critical roles in the exercise of free will and human reason, but the contemplative and meditative have a crucial place as well.

Thus the impetus and purpose for these compositions and recordings.

Distant Echoes Remaining

Much is ignored, much goes unheard.

Of the surrounding world, what remains beneath the attention, that is to say, at a far distance from perceptual focus, can beggar the imagination of all but the child, who remains constantly alert to its cosmos of wonders.

Yet growing accustomed to these, the child moves on, forgetting, wandering into fantasy.

Like Water III

Sound events take place in expanding waves.

A single perspective suggests sound moves in a linear fashion through time, as in the development of a narrative ballad.  When multiple perspectives combine, however, through consideration of various aural effects such as spatial form, emphasis, shading, contrast, unity, and so forth, sound-- and time-- lend themselves to different perceptual interpretations and expressions.

Wavelengths

Listening yields meaning.

This is not to propose that such meaning is always apparent, even to the listener. It may be necessary to adopt a more objective perspective to ascertain the numerous possible meanings a sound, piece of music, or pattern of sounds suggests.

What is certain is that some compositions (and recordings) will have sustained, timeless value, while others are dated to particular settings and events, and still others are silly, frivolous, and disposable.

Then there are the ultimate sounds, the archetypes-- the storm surge, mountain wind, desert night and urban cacophony-- the screams and whispers at the origins of all that may be heard and expressed.

Natural Touch

Consider the natural environment as a template for sonic art, or, if you will, expression of musical form.

Given that the intended outcomes are at the fringes of music, it is nonetheless expression that reflects, modifies, expands upon, and explores auditory events as they occur in the natural world through the prism of the composer's percipience and aesthetic perspective.

Fancy and Gravity

Poetic thought, regardless of its forms of expression, creates juxtaposition and contrast.

Reader, viewer, and listener may interpret according to their best lights, yet the expression remains, over time, sharpened by conceptual understanding yet obscured by shades of cultural change.

Where to Begin

Sparks fly and may be traced to their origins.

Musicians create patterns.  What is rather more interesting is to discover patterns, particularly in the order of things in which no patterns appear to exist at all.

These are images in sound of the living world, those that set the inner ear of listener and composer ablaze with recognition.

Aware

The arts of sound convey emotions, ideas, and spiritual states of being.

The artist projects and objectifies experience as expression and as a learning process, extending and confirming knowledge while establishing perspectives at a distance from the boundaries of time and space.

AM / FM

Changes in atmosphere may be observed continually.

This requires a contemplative approach, one honed by the practice of distinguishing perceptual subtleties. In recorded sound, it is the difference between hearing a finely delineated composition through compatible audio equipment and the same recording through "earbuds"-- it is a matter of choice and discrimination on the part of listener, composer, and producer.

Dreamtime

Sounds reach consciousness through the senses and resonate in memory.

Accordingly, the listener responds, the composer creates, and the evolution of aural imagery unfolds in ways both concrete and ethereal.

Point of the Spear

Science can not reproduce all phenomena, nor replicate consciousness.  It cannot be free of human error, and it can be misused and misinterpreted for non-scientific ends.

Still, science can be an art, and a means to exploration of ideas and concepts impossible to reach otherwise; I, like numerous artists, am indebted to scientific method and study for the capabilities and inspirations technology provides.  Imagination expands with technology, as does science, mutatis mutandis, with imagination.  There is often a great deal of confusion related to the experimental in music and sound, simply because such works are, in many cases, ill-defined and the result of  so-called "spontaneous" events.  While these certainly have their place, for works to be the outcome of experimental processes, they must be considered in the abstract, that is to say, in the postulation of theories, and follow procedures designed to be replicated in order to attain desirable outcomes.

It cannot be overly stressed that this sense of a fundamentally scientific approach is at work in every Black Mountain School composition and recording. These are works created by intent, not accident.

Clairaudience and Reason

Consciousness, and certainly human consciousness, is, according to contemporary evidence and understanding, a rarity in the known universe.

As artist and composer, I hear things that are not present to the ear, sense their objective reality, and bring these atmospheric, auditory images into being through electronic media in ways that were not possible as recently as twenty years ago.  These are works of the inner ear, to be communicated as such to the listener, offering peculiar perspectives in hearing and listening that may contribute to balanced states of mind as well as encouraging clarity of percipience.

Out of the Vasty Deep

Rustle of leaves.  Unfamiliar cries of a strange, wild creature.

Walking out, experience vestigial perceptions of sound imagery impressed upon forgotten ancestors.

Unrevealed Waves

Pause, and listen consciously.

One may take the greatest of care, yet still sense that much goes unobserved. Increasing awareness, one gains comprehension of consciousness and the world.

Therefore, whenever possible, the composer clarifies, interprets, and explicates the imagined through representations of the real.

Breakdown: A Simple Analysis

Social norms and expectations limit perceptivity, particularly in terms of sound and music.

Immured within these limits, the listener becomes accustomed to the various generic forms found at all times and places within the music media, and rarely ventures outside the ordinary frames of reference.

Both composer and discriminating listener understand the importance and value of aesthetic forms beyond the commonplace, and thus it is incumbent upon the composer to bring the unexpected into being in ways that not only "break the mold", but are also capable of altering perceptions in ways that are both beautiful and desirable for all those who would take time to listen.

Continuity

Perceptions and responses to sound fluctuate according to innumerable conditions.

Consciousness and attitude change with perspective.  Observe conditions, become aware of details, give thought to cultural, social, historical, and personal orientation to life and seek insight in the ideas that come to mind.  Understanding the effects and purposes of sound and music becomes of greater moment, yet much of it may lose value and the emotional intensity accorded to it.

Listener and composer know intuitively that there is much that remains unknown and unrealized.

Simultaneity II

Classicism and the Modern do not always converge, but neither are they mutually exclusive.

Narrow thinking produces limited and foolish expression, absurdly demeaning the genuinely elevated as belonging only to time past.  All perspectives take place within myriad frames of reference, and the arts of sound embrace clarity and aesthetic purpose in communicating the gestures of life, from the grand and sweeping to the minute and ephemeral.

This is human character and expression, thrusting aside the burden of temporal considerations.

Edge of Memory

Attend to the phenomena of existence.

Look for the impression that does not reveal itself directly.  Listen for those sounds that reach the uncanny depths of imagination.  Hear the incompleteness of time past becoming manifest in time future, while in the moment now.

Timeslips

When concentrating on perceptual events there are variations in temporal awareness that do not always escape notice.

Mere moments may hold the attention with a profound and lasting impact, or hours pass "in the blink of an eye", yet it is not the qualities of time that change, but the intensity of consciousness.

Such effects as these are among many the composer seeks to evoke within the listener through subtle, uplifting immersion in auditory imagery imbued with the atmospheric elements of sound art.

Territories

Culture may sometimes be viewed in artistic terms as a nexus of memory, history, events in progress, and projections.

From such a vantage point both personal and impersonal forces are at play in the organization and execution of artistic pieces, regardless of form.  I think in terms of applying various elements of visual presentations to soundworks, and I am cognizant of the development of electronic technology in the course of the past half-century through both literature and criticism of the subject as well as by direct experience. While this leads me to listen and compose outside the constraints of what might be called the fine arts as well as those that reflect the popular imagination, it nonetheless demands adherence to those peculiar ideas, theories, and methods that result in desirable artistic outcomes, and therefore working within limits of my own design.

In Studio

At a distance from popular culture and popular opinion, it is possible to engage life's experience differently.

State of being is different, unburdened by subjection to immediacy, the sense of connection to those ideas, cultural events, and social expectations outside the scope of the spiritual faculties of the artist and composer.

When reason and free will determine perspective, narrow focus on the sensational and ephemeral appears as it is, absurd.  Beyond this is the direction of clarity, where the adventure of exploration begins.