Middle Way

Recognize moderation, if you will.

Rather than indulging extremes, choose subtleties; neither harsh nor without vigor, but dynamic, and elevated.  This is the art of sound, of shadings, colors, and contemplative engagement.

Zone Crossing II

The history of the uncanny recounts rare experiences of ineffable music.

Whatever its reality, the sounds heard by percipients of the extraordinary are extremely difficult to remember and virtually impossible to articulate.  I am not referencing the airs and reels of the Celtic "good folk", or the singing of Sirens, although these evoke common ideas of the supernatural, but rather a number of instances out of legend, some of which are said to have occurred within living memory. Notable episodes of this "music that is not music", of sounds that can neither be recreated nor their impressions forgotten, may be traced to Scotland, Eastern Europe, and, in the USA, North Carolina and Arizona.  But having no occasion of moment to share the details of my investigations into these peculiar areas, I can say that they inform, and continue, by continuing explorations to inform, all my own "music that is not music" whether these compositions suggest the classical tone poems or the ambient atmospherics of a more modest, if modern, nature.

Force, Impression

The idea leading to the act of expression is fully formed in certain situations.

In these circumstances, limits are set, and within these boundaries work is finalized.

Flash, Fashion, Elevation

Cultures are numerous, but share elements and essential forms.

Cultural elements tend to relate to values; essential forms, to permanence and transience.  Last week's news held the attention, then vanished.  Such things as the Brandenburg concertos remain constant. In more visceral terms, so does a recording like "Mississippi Queen", by the rock group Mountain, or a film like Bullitt.

Directed by tradition, strive for originality of expression. Directed by media, passively consume and vicariously engage.  The former reflects individuality, potency, progress; the latter, collective, or herd mentality.  In terms of cultural significance, expressions of both style and substance yield the lasting meanings.

Apparition, Vapor, Thunder

Focus yields outcomes, in art, politics, human relationships, and so forth.

This is no reason for the one who perceives work and the world differently to accede to collective values and ideas.  It is, in fact, a critical reason for one to think beyond the commonplace, and be unmoved by it.

Mindful

The world unfolds before the senses.

Art, and particularly sound art, is intended to express and represent, not to replace.

Attention Fragments

Consider direct and indirect musical communication, and the extent of the influence of each.

Now set attendant perspectives and attitudes aside, and come to terms with the idea of compositions in sound that are composed only to be perceived.

Thank Those Who Defend It For Freedom of Expression, and Whose Sacrifice Makes It Free

Opening

Merge sound and setting.

Within the dynamic of such an atmosphere, possibility and action can converge, thought finds form, and meanings become clear.  Music in other forms serves various purposes, but sound as expression of consciousness in real time opens the doors of perception.

What is Black Mountain School?

Take a moment beneath the surface of appearances.

The listener, to any of these albums, is simply asked to grasp what cannot be held, to perceive, however briefly, human experience before words and music.

Perspective in Listening

The choice, in everyday life, is often conscious focus or distracted consciousness.

Only one of the above is fit to establish and execute a course of action directed by reason.

Drive

To act merely for reward is not a virtue.

Moral reason demands that what is right, regardless of reward, or punishment, or loss, is that which must be done.  Yes, this is truth, even in the arts.

Culture, Consciousness

Told what to think, witness decline.

Question.  Continue.  Never compromise.  Elevate.

Sound, Vision, Balance

Originality is not absurdity.

It is expression of independent thought.

Present State

Listen now.

The question is not what do you hear?  The question is why is what you hear subject to opinion and preconceived expectations, rather than direct experience?

Scatterings

Identify every sound in the surrounding environment.

Observe each sound's placement, variations in tone and volume, juxtapositions with other sounds, and movements through the atmosphere.  Synthesize these elements as a musical score.

Incoming

Cultural conflict is a constant, viewed best from distant perspectives.

To assess such conflicts in strictly political terms is an error, there being larger issues than the social, economic, and ideological with which to contend. Culture originates in ideas and ideals, beliefs and approaches to human existence more poetic than mundane. The arts in all their forms emerge out of imagination to make myriad futures, and every individual experiences their influence for good or ill.

When expression evokes foresight, possibilities are illuminated, elevating the concrete world of events.

Such a Thing

The idea of tradition means progress.

Certainly one understands why the urge to erase the past to move ahead is prevalent, but the failure to understand the meaning of tradition reduces culture to a moribund status quo.

Ideas do not disappear. They expand, evolving through individual application and effort. This is why the artist accepts the past, but almost never accepts things as they are.

Sound, Being and Place

Ideas and beliefs alter direct perception.

To the extent that culture and experience determine what is perceived, listening, for example, is limited to subjective preconceptions.

To hear the approach of the future, understand and act upon this knowledge.

Alt / Think

Tomorrow is present in yesterday.

Nonsense to those who look w/out vision and who listen w/out the inner ear.

Imagination and Environment

Behind and within sounds lie force and intent.

The artist as composer considers a choice: bring this force to bear in places it has never been, or place it where expectations have long been focused.

Omens to the Ear

Find tone in a footfall, rattling of silverware, disembodied voices.

Listen, and hear the unfolding of reality with such perceptual clarity.

The Why of Solitude

Observe, and obsession with connectivity through technology is ubiquitous.

It appears as fixations upon such things as status and attitude, at once narrow and self-absorbed.  It should go without saying that technological developments present greater opportunities for creative endeavors than these, but in terms of human nature, it was ever thus.

Of far greater moment are contemplative insights, the gestures of expression, and life's mysteries.

Transmission IX

There is much for the artist to explain. It is expected, even welcomed.

But it is never necessary, whether for cultural, social, or artistic purposes, to explain one's self.

The Real and its Representations

The mask of the actor makes no sound, but amplifies the motivation of character behind it.

Personal aesthetic experience is not cultural immersion, but individual attitude of mind and perceptivity.

Whether the former dominates the latter, or vice-versa, depends upon cultural vigor and integrity. It is the strong culture that listens, and hears the individual; the weak one simply generates noise.

Threshold

Observe the processes in motion as history, tradition, and culture are discarded.

Condemn the whole of the past, assume the motivations of rats in a maze, cast down the possibility of every ideal, particularly those resting on an understanding of beauty and truth.  Render ideas of art in every form worthless, and the artist inconsequential, until the act of creation becomes impossible in the unthinking, shallow void of the moment.

Disaster follows. The sleep of reason yields monsters.

Reality of Expectation

With a decline of thought comes a decline of perception.

Recognize when the "spontaneous moment" in art is a contrivance, and inauthentic. It then becomes clear that not only is this the case now for most expressions, but it has been so for almost a century.

Resistance II

Consider the relationships between the work of Einstein, Picasso, and Eliot.

In cultural terms, it is the artist who must choose to do the difficult things.  This is the path of persistence, courage, and hard work.

Transformation Ambient II

The concept of the sonic setting emerges from transformation ambient processes.

These processes involve the development of atmospheres that reflect those of environmental surroundings, whether in natural settings, public spaces, or smaller, more intimate confines.

By intention and application of compositional methods, these represent events as they occur, regardless of design, within particular parameters, or circumstances of time and space.  And as representations, they are akin to musical compositions such as classical tone poems, but are not subsumed under musical theory. Rather, they are intended to appeal to aesthetic perceptivity as opposed to musical sensibility.

This is the case with all the albums by Black Mountain School and Ghost Radio Orchestra, as the open, aware listener will easily discern.

Atmospheres for Imaginary Settings

Cultural conditioning sets limits that define music.

Certainly in free societies this does not have to be the case, and with knowledge and percipience come broader, more critical perspectives than those associated with predictable musical content.

In point of fact, very few listeners, songwriters, and composers take an interest in expansion beyond the generalized commercial and academic horizons, not because audiences would have no interest in such endeavors-- a lack of interest in musical genres and fashions, even the so called "refined" ones, declines precipitously as the listener moves further beyond adolescence-- but because the knowledge of advanced aural compositions, their aesthetics, and their purposes have yet to articulated properly to the public at large.  Ambient music, as defined by Brian Eno and others, has indeed been established as such, and with intellectual clarity according to its character.

But it is what I would call the sonic setting composition that is different in nature than ambient music, engaged, as it is, with the perceptions and consciousness of the listener, and created according to an entirely different paradigm. This requires analysis accordingly, and ultimately, a kind of introduction, via informed artists and individuals, into the broader cultural setting.  Otherwise one need expect no more than the perpetuation of the state of things in the musical arts.

Not All Things Are Instantaneous

Listen and hear, bring all the senses to bear, everywhere at once.

Perceive, and become cognizant of surrounding forces, vast and impenetrable.

Vision and Danger

Whatever enters consciousness is chosen, or it is imposed.

Listen and hear. Be told what to think. One or the other. Never both.

Word, Sound, Sword

A hundred years pass, and the West remains burdened by failed nineteenth-century ideas.

Yet it is in works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that the full Voice of Reason is raised, and it remains in the cultural artifacts of the period that speak with equal and essential power in the modern perspective today.

The noise of the mob drowns it out, only to drown in the mediocrity it glorifies. Collective absurdity, for such it is, produces nothing, impedes progress, and silences free thought.

Its center remains the guillotine.

In precincts where modern genius yet thrives, it is understood that there are no problems for which solutions do not already exist.  And all the arts, in concrete and abstract forms, are gathering force.

Art is Dead

Again and again, observe the instances in which the cultural norms are thrust upon the individual.

Not everything called by the name art is art in fact and being.

Where there is no more individual expression, but only that approved and allowed by collective forces intent upon "controlling" culture, art is indeed dead.  And it must, as a power, as an abstract, aesthetic ideal, and as a principle, be resurrected.

To Hear Oneself Think

Static may be loud, but it changes little.

A culture overwhelmed and burdened by noise is incapable of change; it stagnates, and decays. The same is true of individual experience.

These works are dedicated to combat the impress of negative forces against individual freedom.

Listening, Advancement

Understanding sound beyond music, composition advances.

Set aside concerns with time and space, meter, rhythm, and melody: perceive the unfolding of reality. 

Agency

Observe the predictability of collective action and expression.

Consider instead the singular dynamic of the personal, individual perspective in action. Here may be found focused and sustained creative progress, in opposition to brief obsessions consumed by one crisis after another, none of which are ever resolved.

Wandering Imagination

Travel to an environment in which there is no noise, only the sounds of life.

The atmosphere casts a spell. This is enchantment in the ancient sense, a contemplative state.

And this is the perceptual sense of being we strive to evoke in these Black Mountain School works.

Aside

Observe the extent of contemporary conditioning on the human psyche.

Led to believe there are few, if any, "new" ideas beyond those established as being of extreme significance in the cultural surroundings, audiences of entertainment and the arts are bereft of contemporary voices, ideas, and productions that impel and inspire social awareness beyond the status quo.  This is an untenable scenario.

Free people will not long tolerate such conditions.

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.

Bones

Word is expressed in symbol, and through sound.

But the ultimate expression of word is being, represented through the arts of poetry and sound.

Transcend. Elevate.

Rise.

Axis

Civilization is predicated upon the transmission of culture.

The rise and fall of the way of nature is reflected in the Boethian wheel. Neither east nor west, the center also surrounds.  In this manner art emerges in the composition of sound.

To understand this is to listen, and hear, with the inner ear.

Elemental, Abstract, Infinite in Aspect

The contemporary produces popular culture.

But it is the modern. properly understood, without the biases against tradition that first identified its nature, that produces the wider culture, sustaining the abstract values and the permanent things in the course of progress.

Immerse, Sustain

Song forms call to mind emotional states of various durations.

Songs may produce intense bursts of short-term feeling, at best, and little, if any, perceptual change.

In contrast, a sense of expanded, contemplative awareness is the natural outcome of an absorption in extended, atmospheric works, purposely composed to create totality of effect, as opposed to transient diversion.

Place

Consider the internal environment as well as the external one.

Find the balance.  Compose with the sounds of imagination that reflect and represent direct experience and the contemplative attitude of mind that evokes perceptivity of this nature.

Make Real

Become aware.

Put others first.  Ignore the whine of self-importance. Then it is possible to concentrate on perceptual awareness, refine sensory experience, and gain clarity in active thought. Here is the fund of creativity, of works yet to be composed, of sound art.

Dissolve, Converge

The composer must imagine, as the listener must.

Imagine sound coalescing into a different order, unlike music yet beyond the mundane.

Sonic Color

Enclosed by a medical device. Blue light tubes seen through yellow plastic goggles.

The machine runs for seventeen minutes with a bright, fluctuating drone, a long sequence of cycles in slight variance; metal machine music for Van Gogh sunflowers.  From down the hallway and through four walls, scattered across time, the ghostly flourish of beat saxophones.

Stranger Things

Focus concentration on the visual image by listening, and hearing.

This, too, is perception, experience, creativity, and, in a larger sense, the projection of aesthetic ideas sans subjectivity.  That which is distant, that which was silent, is present.

Footsteps on Hardwood Floors

Radio, almost inaudible.

Objects being moved on a counter top. Wind, or air passing through a vent.  Machine noise starts and stops.  Child drops key ring. Unidentifiable low rumble.  Impression of light rain.

In the inner ear, a symphony.