Listening, View Time

Experience, absorb, and gain insight.

As the contemplative moment happens spontaneously, so may it be consciously brought into being by effort and intent.  Find the setting, observe, be still, and know.

Shock Value and Its Double

Expressive, perceptive art, even that of sublime merit, will not move the complacent.

A culture dominated by self-absorption must have either art that appeals to vanity or gives offense to its perceived "enemies", those whose perspectives on life are different.

Music and art that directs the attention to a greater sense of being and reality has no impact on such spectators and listeners. Nonetheless, creative minds of broader vision will neither be still, nor silent.

Transmission X

Observe the near-total absence of contemplative art forms, as if they have never existed.

Just as the desire for "enlightenment" is itself an obstacle to that goal, so is the quest for any kind of artistic meaning when cultures and societies are wholly given over to gross, material self-indulgence.

Become and Be

Nothing remains nothing.

Culture created with the expectation that it will become obsolete is not culture at all, but waste.

Everywhere At Once

The creative mind may be absorbed by the times, or defy them.

Yet there is another perspective, one that understands what is within one's will and power, and what is not.  With this understanding there is no reason to give consideration to anything beyond the work.

Against the Grain

There are those for whom art is a vehicle, and those for whom art is a work of creation.

A vehicle serves the ends and agendas of artist, and it is only successful insofar as it provides for the artist's "passions".  But by creation, I mean an objective expression that exists in and of itself, with its own intrinsic value and meaning, beyond the temporal reality of its creator.

Autonomy and The Work

The artist, if anyone, understands limitations and constraints.  These always exist.

Approaches to creative work that obviate the effects of circumstances beyond the artist's will and control are essential. One cannot accommodate ignorance; one can do everything within reason to elevate the light.

Ends and Approaches

Reach for those things that do not yet exist.

Expression reflects learning and experience as well as perceptivity and vision.

Rise to Realization

Advancement of vision is essential to creation.

Evaluate the past in terms of contemporary "standards" and "values" and commit the same errors as those who call the cave paintings of Lascaux "primitive". Real expression is not falsified to accede to such things as social acceptability or "political correctness", these now being virtually the same.

Real expression is revolution, at its core and at its roots.

Interpretations

An individual referred to one of these works today as "Zen Music".

The particular piece was the album Night Traffic, and the individual remains unaware that I am the composer and producer of the work.  A different perspective on the familiar is always suggestive.

That someone, in the midst of initiating a discussion about progressive music, listened to the sounds and associated them with the view of Zen represented in popular culture-- one of calm and a general sense of equanimity of attitude-- indicates a desirable effect.

And Far Between

The idea of beauty is intimately connected to the intellect and perceptions.

It is not always the strange, extravagant, or visionary event that evokes awareness of beauty, but merely the moment given over totally to reflection.

Such moments are indeed few, but do not have to be so.  To reflect, to experience fully, is a choice.

Timeless Expression

Reflect, contemplate, imagine.

Detached, experience what connectivity does not offer.

Nothing More

Technology, in and of itself, is central to contemporary culture.

Yet it is art that elevates the human condition, and technology is nothing more than a tool.

Exceptional Event Awareness

Take cognizance of those impressions that appear on the distant edge of perceptual awareness.

Sensory impressions of this order may, or may not, be within grasp.  For the composer, these can be indicators of auditory possibilities, just as the nebulous image in the mind's eye may inform the visual artist. These may be considered extramundane events, sought out by very few, but the scientist, poet, warrior, and individual of imagination know how to grasp and reveal them.

The Calling

Perceive, imagine, express.

The public, media culture, and social networks, reflecting overarching attitudes of the times, have their preferences and biases, expectations and demands.

But the avant-garde exists nonetheless, and grows increasingly distant, that is to say, far ahead, far beyond the mediocre, the mad, and the mundane.

Art, Social and Personal

Media directs the attention towards external impressions, and interprets them for various purposes.

Yet, given its superficiality, imagery for mass consumption cannot rival direct experience, and does so only in proportion to weakness of intellect and will.  One may well consider all the implications.

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?

Higher, Wider, Deeper II

Sound alone may assert moral reason, reflecting the artist or composer's purposes.

As aesthetic appreciation of expression expands to contemplation of meaning, such elevation of understanding is commensurate with the insight the work evokes.

Spark and Means

Technology has its place.  This is not a complex or nuanced proposition, but plain fact.

Technology, in proper perspective, is absolutely subject to human reason and will.  It is, in fact, only as valuable as it is utilitarian, and only useful insofar as it contributes to the elevation and unburdening of the human condition.

Let those who will have it direct their lives defend it if they can, but such arguments are of no concern to free human beings.

Image, Information, Awareness

Low cloud cover reflects distant environmental sounds.

Music is no longer a rarity, as it once was. It is the nuanced perception of atmosphere that is an uncommon experience, so unusual as to be uncanny. Thus, for composer and listener alike, new inspirations, and ultimately new forms.

Meaningless

Observe the state of things with culturally aware eye and ear.

One might be forgiven for persisting in the idea that "instant access to all information everywhere at any time must ultimately lead to a cultural renaissance in twenty-first century, the likes of which have never been seen" has ever been more than a highly dubious proposition.

Connection and Separation

The modern has, for a number of decades, no longer represented a rejection of tradition.  While some artists and scholars recognize this, and others do not, this is not the issue.

One must turn to the so-called post-modern, a declining subset of modern perspective, to find puerile desertions of reason and meaning at play.  The modern, as a matter of course, continues to repudiate the specious, the false, and the failed, in terms of culture, politics, and social perspectives.

With this understanding in mind it is evident that the dominant artistic vision promoted in the global marketplace, in terms of contemporary expression, is nihilistic in nature. In those visual and musical arts directly associated with the mass media, this outlook serves as propaganda for totalitarian statist
purposes, in that it reduces cultural communication to impotent, manageable and predictable forms of divisive absurdity at odds with those in favor of individual liberty and freedom of thought.

The artist who believes otherwise acts accordingly, regardless of all risk, and it is effortless to take into account the essential nature of the resulting works. These are forward-thinking, rational, and, most provocative to elitists, expressions that link the audience to experiential reality, rather than diverting attention toward spurious, illiberal ideals.

Now, When, Where, Why

Consider those times and places that represent humanity's greatest cultural achievements.

Objectively, the elevation of culture, even at the most base levels, evolves in conditions that promote and defend the freedom of the individual and the merits of reason and work.  Without these, there is only the stasis of collective morbidity, held fast by the tyranny of small minds.

Over Mind

Not everyone views art as being more than personal, emotional, expression, of course.

So it is that the art that is a living connectivity between the earthly and the spiritual, contemplative imagination-- which is to say, between ordinary consciousness and the transcendent-- cannot be realized by those attached to the mediocre and the mundane.

Freeze in Conformity

Conditions in human societies, for good and ill, have reason and cause.

Those who accept sclerotic social and political perspectives deserve the art and culture that reflects them.

Digital Inferiority

The West does not lack in reason, spiritual enlightenment, or contemplative arts.

It is contemporary life that is wanting in broader, deeper perspectives than the ones most likely to be celebrated in the shallow confines of academia, populist politics, and mass media.

Unrevealing

Look for what cannot be seen, listen for what is not there.

Fellow artists understand the essential nature of this statement, with some, but very few, others.

Entitlement and Falsity

Reality demands the artist be self-reliant.

The alternative is obligation-- obligation to cultural norms or special interests, commercial investors, and any number of people generally who provide for the artist's well-being. Some creative types will not only find this acceptable, but desirable, and these are the people-- predators and parasites, in point of fact-- who give art a bad name.

The artistic "expressions" produced in these scenarios are inconsequential, impermanent, detestable, and vain-- like the society they reflect.

Affray

No narrative that contradicts objective reality is viable.

When the arts are used as a vehicle to call day night, and night, day, the culture subjected to this is no longer merely wasting energy and indulging in frivolity.  Freedom itself is absolutely endangered.

Unmoved and Unmoving

The imagination of the individual does not fail.

Cultural imagination, when it fails, is replaced by artifice and contrivance.

This failure is the direct result of the manipulation of media through which public acceptance of the superficial over the substantive is engineered by those with vested interests in "artistic productions".

The individual artist perseveres, nonetheless, in solitude, while the culture is the worse for it.

And those who are predisposed to equate individuality with the "evils" of conservatism are in the worst, that is to say, the most ignorant and benighted, cultural straits of all.

L'Air du Temps

Sound imagery may mean more, or less, than it suggests.

Neither complexity nor simplicity imply merit in themselves.  What matters to listener and composer alike, upon final reflection, is total effect.  Therein lies balance, expansion, and elevation.

There Are No Terms

Every artistic potential that becomes real does so because of choice and action.

Neither cultural attitudes nor the "preparedness" of "the public" can stop the artist. There is one thing of importance, and one thing only: the work.

Cultural Drift and Correction of Course

The convergence of cultural messages demands acceptance of the status quo.

One can expect nothing more from mass media, academia, and other purveyors of ideological cant.

Meaning is found through arduous exercise of reason and insight. Anything less is simply surrender to false appearances, error, and mediocrity.

Sources, Origins

Search memory, and aural impressions will reveal themselves.

These are unconscious sensory images, taken from the course of daily events and reaching back across the gulf of experience and consciousness to recognition of first and primal sound settings.

Some will call it impossible to realize such impressions in musical form.

The artist as composer will say music is not the sonic form by which these atmospheres may be brought into being.

Istigkeit

Witness the world in motion.

If the goal is to express the aesthetic, contemplative moment, the composer must hear what the visual artist sees, in both objective reality and in the inner ear of imagination.

Identity, Image, and Audacity

Typically, diversion and dance come to mind when discussing the purposes of music.

Further consideration suggests the use of music in ceremony and ritual, and for artistic expression of emotion and ideas. Enhancement of concentration and meditative focus, refinement of perception and the reinforcement of contemplative states of mind and being, however, are of far greater importance to those who practice these ways of engagement with reality through expansion of consciousness.

Certainly this is the position of one who composes works in sound to such ends as these.

Material to Abstract

Sensory awareness confined to a limited palette grows dim and weakens.

For the artist as composer and listener there must be expansion of both experience and imagination.

The temporal, the mediocre, and the mundane do not represent alternatives, but the end of culture.

Range II

The integrity of the artist cannot abide by the status quo.

Established limits do not exist to be exploited for personal gain, but to be challenged by visions beyond their scope.

Open, Close, Open

Emerge into the real.

Express the good; act with right reason.  Do this in defiance of culture, and at personal cost.

Understand and come to grips with what is then revealed.

As Forge Demands Fire

Much is made, in contemporary terms, of the concept of progress.

But progress implies improvement.

Show me this improvement.  Reveal it, that I may believe it.

Otherwise it is only a word to obscure the consolidation of power of the status quo.  This much is plainly evident, everywhere, at all times.  Look and see directly.  Listen, and hear.

Resistance III

Neither oppression nor repression of the arts ever reach an end.

Whether imposed by historical traditions or through contemporary cultural imperatives, subjection to collectivist thinking in academic and political circles will always plague artists no less than historians and all those who strive for true representations of reality. The purpose is simple: to eliminate utterly the power and value of the individual.

And the artist is nothing if not an autonomous free agent.  Nothing more than a lackey, a bootlicker.

Evidence of this is plain and clear.  It is not hidden from sight; one need only look at it directly.

There is no end to it.  Yet even if there is no winning, there can be no surrender, or all-- and this means all that is essential to cultural reality itself-- is lost.

Miasma

Expression has meaning when it is fundamentally sound and well-reasoned.

A culture and society that conflates "revolution" and "art" will have neither.

Aural Tints and Reflections

Find sounds of light, of passing distances, of turning winds.

This is the sonic dynamic, representing the ebb and flow of life.

Invisible

Mass media directs mass mentality in every form.

This direction implies that attention is driven towards certain things and away from others. It is as true regarding the arts, especially those related to music, as it is for politics, culture, and everything else.

Hence, independent thought, and the independent artist, are equally essential to life, and rarely seen.

Spells

Those familiar with the cyclic nature of reality understand impermanence, gain, and loss.

History lends itself to foresight, science to progress, and the arts, to enlightenment, even more so than the philosophical perspectives with their degrees of specificity.  It is the individual whose senses are opened through artistic expression, and the individual who must grapple with the implications of the artistic work.

Setting and Psyche

Contemplative space is itself an artistic accomplishment, whether created or discovered.

Noise renders even the most comfortable and visually beautiful place squalid, burdened by intellectual and spiritual neglect.  Everyone has endured this, and it is far too common.

Composer and listener share common bonds, and first among them are goals of elevated experience.

Integrity of Potential

The arts survive.

Decline is a fact of culture.  Ideas originate, prevail, and find their final forms. The arts never reach a state of finality.  To be continually filled and continually emptied out is the nature of expression.

Culture Paradox

Observe the "information society".  Find knowledge ubiquitous, literacy merely functional.

When this plethora of information leads to the assumption that the possession of an internal fund of knowledge is unnecessary, the error is one of profound consequence. Consider only the implications of failed, archaic, totalitarian ideas impressed upon art, politics, and the social order because their outward appearances give the uninformed the specious impression of "novelty". Yet this is of very little moment in comparison to the mass abdication of critical reason it presupposes.

Thus the essential nature of the contemplative, and of atmospheric sound art to enhance reflection.

Wax, Wane

Attainment of intellectual expression is a goal and focus of art.  It is noble, and desirable.

This is because of lasting impact, the shaping of future events, and what might be called the transmission of cultural progress through evolving ideas.

As a perspective this is easily lost upon society, and the momentum of reason difficult to gain.

Observe, Then Question

At no time in human history has music so absolutely saturated culture.

Thus it is taken for granted, devalued, viewed as a "given", without consideration for the labor of the trained musician or the intellectual rigor demanded of the composer, arranger, and songwriter, who are themselves considered marginal figures.