Sound, Attitude, Perspective

One hears of the mood of the country and the tone of cultural discourse as factors in critical events.

Perhaps, then, it is worthwhile to consider ways in which the sounds of various cultural environments, including music and its reduction to a continuum of fragments that may be heard throughout all media, similarly reflect, influence, or direct the consciousness of percipients.

Absurdly, this is considered a "dangerous" idea.

Pythia

What is can not become what must be.

This is the nature and challenge of transformation.

Embrace Falling Night

Sustain and abstain.

These are the choices the composer considers before acting to bring sounds into being.

Emotion, Perception

Consider the "feel" of sound.

Artistic choice in matters of representation allows for elements of composition expressing subjective mood and tone, and various degrees of clarity of impression as well. Each, whether working together or separately, contributes to the total effect of the work at hand.

Redefine Sound

Undo the damage of habitual, unconscious perceptions of "music" and "noise".

Discover what does not meet expectations.  Listen to what is not there until it can be heard.

Trash, Treasure

The generic musical forms exist as structured expressions, and cannot simply be abandoned.

Neither should they be subjects of extraordinary emotional attachments. Superior sounds are to be expanded, inferior ones are to be tamed and minimized.  To accept idle immersion in all that comes before is to be desensitized.  Sound is analogous to the experience of being. Being is expansion of awareness and knowledge in this moment now.

Higher, Towards the Eclipse

Musical and artistic artifacts saturate culture at all times.

This does not stop innovation, and cannot stand in the way of experimentation. Audiences may become complacent with an overabundance of what were once riches. The artist will not.

Aesthetics and Meaning

Make time for art.

Gain insight into the real. Grasp the nature of appearances. Illuminate life.

Subject / Object

The art of sound must, from time to time, mean sudden realization.

Listening perception engages consciousness; consciousness expands beyond the "self".

Engagement and its Opposite

The reality of the cultural climate is that it is constantly changing.

If the artist is not to be swayed accordingly, it is necessary to remain focused on a singular vision.

Cultural Politics

One would be wise to remember that, ultimately, social groups bring about the culture they deserve.

Motion

Art, among many things, is a perception of experience.

Expression inspires greater experience, evolving in this manner. The joyless pursuit of fame and wealth is a different matter entirely, and for that, audience and artist can be grateful.

Energy

Virtue is a force of good.

In music, the idea of virtue may be problematic. In the case of sound art, the good is self-evident, or it exists not at all.

Supposing

Sounds are interesting when they have a degree of aesthetic appeal and meaning.

When there is a dearth of innovation, what follows is a great deal of "re-imagining", and the status quo is thereby sustained while it yet declines.  Observe music culture as the clearest example, its common patterns and deteriorating archetypes replicated again and again, growing vapid and empty.

It is not repetition, but juxtaposition that possesses intrinsic interest, evoking meaning through renewal of sound and vision.

On / Off

Go listening, hear the surrounding world.

Nothing changes and everything changes.

State, Setting, Feeling

Ultimately, no "narrative" is acceptable.

Art, culture, politics, and myriad perspectives both social and personal cannot be tried by their so- called narratives, that is to say, their associated representations, justifications, or articulations.

They live, or are found not to exist at all, through experience, which is why I say listen, and hear.

Complacency and Doubt

Conformity to trending attitudes does not confer cultural perspective.

Clearly this is contrary to popular opinion, but popular opinion is an insult to individual intelligence. There is no monolithic "we" that "shares" anything.  There is only perception, insight, and proper understanding of the appearances of reality,

These do not exist in unquestioning acceptance of group norms.

Cultural perspective demands right reason, freedom of thought, and contemplative reflection. The way of the artist demands the same, if the art is to be of significant cultural meaning and importance.

Apocalypse Past

Rarely is music central to culture and of premier importance.

By historic measure, such times are brief, revealing the nature of the human condition as only art can with respect to life's impermanence.  Hollow echoes follow, sustaining the futility of nostalgia.

Yet art remains, to be revealed in different ways, including those brought to light by the art of sound.

Amid the Predictable

One may perceive deeply, or not at all.

Art exists independently, and makes no demands upon an audience.

Obscured Presences

In plain sight.

Sibelius.  Debussy.  Satie.    Tone Poems.  Impressionism.  Furnishing Music.

Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan.  Birth of the Cool.  Terry Riley.  John Cage.  Minimalism.  Indeterminacy.

Lists do not end; there is only failure to know, and to do.

Ideas of value may become lost, misunderstood, or set aside, but they do not cease to exist.

Search

It is a way of sound.

It is everywhere, yet it goes unnoticed. Those who claim to seek it want it to be something other than what it is.  Those who find it know it is beyond description.

Listen. It is always present, yet it must always be heard within. Then it will resonate throughout the greater world.

Enough to Listen

What consciousness does naturally, it may do with intent.

Upon entering new environments, curiosity is aroused, attention directed, awareness heightened.

Hearing, sustain such acuity with expansive, contemplative perception.

Evening Traveler

Sounds of the day fade into vague impressions.

Light is altered, and with it the stillness before twilight arrives. Such are contemplative atmospheres. The composer will do well who brings sonic elements together in forms that evoke indistinguishable states of consciousness.

Existential Choice

Art survives.

Culture endures as all things rise and fall. The nature of art is that of a constant state of returning, and the creative act follows knowledge, perception and experience. This is reality, and nothing less.

Forward Movement

Ideas alone are never enough to fulfill the necessities of change.

There must be courage, followed by action, to conceive, initiate, create, and complete what must be done. Only methods and means differ, in grasping the possible and making it real.

There are those who will accept being told what to believe and what to do.

And there are those who will not.

Expression and Knowledge

Vous ne pouvez pas créer de l'expérience. Vous devez la subir.     Albert Camus

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Albert Camus

Almost forty years ago, I read Charlie Hebdo from time to time. It was occasionally amusing, if predictable, as a vehicle through which to épater les bourgeoisie. But no one needs to justify supporting freedom of expression, or condemning evil.  Nor will I.

Real, Surface

Setting and tone manipulate audience attitude.

These manipulations may be subtle or overbearing, convincing, attractive, or offensive and insulting. Unlike the atmospherics of visual media such as film, those of sound will be perceived by the mind's eye of imagination, and the sense of mood they create will impact the listener directly.

The integrity of the composer's inner vision must be sure, and certain, and sustained.

Of Worldly and Otherworldly States of Being

Some sounds reflect the marketplace, the social setting, the spectacle of culture.

Other sounds are out of range of the excitement of crowds, the diversions and distractions of the mass media, and the charms of vicarious emotional experience.

These latter sounds are the ones that evoke atmospheres, provoke questions and speculations, and call up images that elevate consciousness beyond the transitory and the mundane aspects of life.

In and Out of the Abstract

Inevitably, the arc of history appears to end in the corruption of the present moment.

But this is no more than the nature of the present moment.  What is not now apparent continues the arc into the future, even as it exists, within reach, yet in obscurity.

Elements, Connections, Radiation

With cultural changes, atmospheres and perspectives change.

Art, and in particular the art of sound, contributes to bringing the inner world of the individual and the outer world that is objective reality into varying degrees of balance.  Each is interrelated and involves myriad causes and effects.  One deems some things to possess value, and others, utter rubbish.

Accordingly, one creates.

Fundamental Nature

The strength of civilization lies in moral reason.

Art, in opposition to illusion, must be free of guile.

Speculative Realism

Experimental culture is a continuum of ideas.  It is simple, as it must be.

Neither "alternative culture", nor "counter-culture", and certainly removed from both "pop" and the extreme of "outsider" expression, the experimental establishes perspective according  to possibility.

If it is desirable to create that which is not attainable, it is necessary to create the conditions in which it becomes so.  This means more than the development of potential technologies.  What it demands are new concepts the technologies may further, and the moral reasoning capable of bringing the future into being.

This Night

On any evening, listen, and hear.

Discriminate between the sounds of culture and the sound of atmospheric events.  Find the dividing line that separates the auditory imagery of the surroundings from that of media and music.

Each tells a different story.  One is potentially true.  The other is always true.

Clearing III

Things plain and unadorned, like those immeasurably complex, may be beyond comprehension.

Just as there are rare objects and events, rare combinations of sounds may be brought into being.

Simple Thought

Allow experience to unravel, winding its way.

This is a way of listening, and a way of composing as well.

Listening, and Hearing, in Flux

One listens outward and into the surroundings.

Even so, outward perceptions are colored within-- by knowledge, experience, and emotion.

Aural Encounters

Percipience of sounds in the course of moving through various environments is not the same as listening to music.  

This is a simple fact, and as such, it is not given any attention.  One might assume that listening to the sounds of most environments would not be as interesting as listening to music, and that will often be the case.  Yet it is not the particular sounds that we are concerned with here, but the differences in the ways in which the one is produced by events within the atmosphere and the other according to intent and instrumentation, because the effects of each are entirely different.  The act of listening to any piece of music, whether a pop song. a classical piece, or a performance by a jazz combo, combines both expectation and attention on the part of the listener.  We create entirely different scenarios.

The musical works of Black Mountain School are designed to be a part of the listening environment by reflection and representation of the ways in which sounds come into being in the organic sense, as part of the reality of a setting, to be experienced in the same ways as the surroundings are perceived in the course of the day, but with the additional element of aesthetic design that enlivens the sonic environs.  The resulting experience is totally unlike that of "listening to music", as it is based upon divergent principles, theories and techniques, developed to sustain beauty and interest and to intensify total effect.  In point of fact, no other ensemble composes and produces works revealing the art of sound in ways utilizing these ideas and methods in the same manner as does Black Mountain School, as their unique recordings amply demonstrate.

Past, Hot and Cold

Generic music styles run their course, are lauded in retrospect, and decline.

While virtuoso performers are always welcome, the music with which they are associated, having exhausted its original excitement, tends toward falsity, hollow meaning, and repetition in various guises, from the ironic to the improbably dramatic.

Then, listener and composer must gain the ground of integrity, or give way to the mediocre and mundane.  Thus, find the essential nature of the creative will.

Calm and Clear

Consider what is and what might be.

Look back with understanding, look forward with curiosity.  Listen, and hear.

Crossing Through

The nature of sound art encompasses percipient hearing and variable depths of experience.

On balance, objective auditory vibrations and designs commingle with subjective knowledge, feeling, and memory. Within these fields composer and listener communicate, heedless of the course of time, unfettered by limits of space.

Unreal Distances

One cannot be both here and there.

Contemporary subjection to immediacy demands engaging in continuous direct involvement with all forms of technological representations, and imposes vicarious participation in cultural events at the expense of direct perception.  Attention is divided, communication loses purpose.

Technologies are tools of expression; viewed wrongly, they become its shackles.

Reason in Light

Contemplative states of consciousness lead to insights and intuitive, creative problem-solving.

This is an undisputed fact, but one given little regard in the course of commonplace events.  One has not other course than to move forward, and that is to say, against the current of contemporary ideas and values.  For artist and composer, this demands integrity, and, for the most part, silence.

Missing Impressions

One sees action, another sees color, and still another percipient sees art, or notes its absence.

Clearly, one may listen in the same manner, hearing and recognizing according to perspective, knowledge, experience and temperament.

The senses cannot reveal what viewpoint, attitude, and feeling do not encompass.

Range

Unfettered access to culture can foster the delusion that all expression possible exists now.

It is only among the utterly benighted that such abominable beliefs obtain. Renewal is as constant as the rise and fall of all things, and that which is thoroughly new falls late within the scope of the cultural "maven".

Work

Art will not be reduced to monetary value. This is merely price, high or low.

Greater values are life and human freedom; neither can they be so reduced.

With Reason

The Wise One wrote down his wisdom, and rode away from the city gates.

Meet every human need, and still it is not enough. It will never be enough.

Paradox

It cannot be experienced until it is comprehended.

It cannot be comprehended until it is experienced.

Art Remains

Atmospheres are as subtle and interesting as the percipient is capable of understanding them.

The culture may indeed experience a failure of moral reason on a vast scale, and ultimately reach a nadir of emotional and intellectual vapidity of expression.

Nonetheless, the artist is tasked with a profound indifference, one equal to a singular vision.

Ornament and Illumination

Cast aside all ideas of music.

Consider sounds as elements of an art form that may be taken as purely decorative, yet possessing qualities of exceptional emotional, intellectual, and spiritual value, that, given their impressions upon the listener, might be considered instructive.

Expanding Moment

As events unfold, some are imposed upon the attention and others are arbitrarily ignored.

Intrinsic to these events are sounds in myriad proportions, rhythms other than the commonplace, and a broad spectrum of perceptions that are, for the greatest part, dismissed as having no relevance to the generally accepted narratives of life.

This does not render such events any less real, or any less valuable as an artist's creative resources.