Separation and Unity

Creative thought necessitates many perspectives.

Clarity of perspective necessitates critical and creative responses.  Each implies both, and for the artist each will be revealed and expressed.

Reversals

Hubris engages the pursuit of nemesis.

Thus are fortunes changed in the Greek tragedies, and the mighty decline and fall.

These are cautionary tales of cultural moment and permanence.  In the mind's eye, Icarus against the sun, Orpheus turning at the threshold of the underworld, crying out "O Eurydice, look upon the world I have won you back to!"

The artist must live in reality, regardless of the ways in which worlds and visions might be expressed and represented through artistic works.  To do otherwise invites disaster, arrayed in myriad forms.

Look, and Regard

Art, of every variety, establishes links, connections between realities and perspectives.

Nonetheless, it is dangerous to assume the mere appearance of a thing is, in fact, the reality.  What is necessary, for art, and its adherents, to thrive is the ability to discriminate between the two. This is depth of vision, and an understanding of a central element of reason, one essential to an engaged and perceptive life.

By no means does such critical understanding exist as natural insight.  It demands thought, and the discipline required to take a full measure of objective facts.  It is also incompatible with acting in a state of unselfconscious ignorance or in the easy yolk of subjection to ideological cant. Yet these are common points of view reflecting, predictably, common hubris, particularly among the highly, yet poorly, educated.  Little can be done for those who fear questioning the foundations of their own self-regard, even through the ministrations of the arts-- fine, popular, or otherwise.

Beyond the Present

Necessity demands.

There can be no pretense to the artist's position. One's only recourse in every setting is the truth.

Same / Never the Same

Art depends on risk, or it will not be.

Without risk, nothing changes. The only complete failure is the failure to act, even in the face of the impossible.

Time Past. Time Present. Time Future.

Time present and time past. Are both perhaps present in time future. And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present.

from BURNT NORTON (No. 1 of 'Four Quartets') by T.S. Eliot

Published on Feb 15, 2016

Filmed among modern ruins in Caroline du Nord.
Arranged and Performed by Moderan
Vocal by Dr. S.G. "Trashpile" Hunter, Antiquary.

Words & Music © by David Bowie
from "The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars" (1972)

Licensing: Harry Fox Agency

TINTORETTO MUSIC
CHRYSALIS MUSIC GROUP INC DIGITAL ONLY
EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING LTD.

On Watch

Instinct for expression demands the force of reason, else it is abandoned.

Vision translates into conception, and concept is realized in act and work.

Comprehension, Response

Artistic expression that provokes intense emotion yields little more than singular effect.

Evocation of contemplative response through artistic expression perpetuates elevation of emotion, the intellectual facilities, and consciousness itself, producing expansion of perception over time.

Dominion

Fantasy worlds are nothing if not popular, and thus they are perpetually recreated.

In contrast, the exploration of life and being can never be as complete as any imagined alternative, yet every vision, every work, will be unique in perspective, execution, content, and theme.

Observations Untold

Cultural loss is, to some degree, inevitable.

Visible artifacts remain, and with them, the suggestion of sensory impressions, every one vague and mysterious, beyond reach for millennia.

No finely-considered speculations will recreate "music" of uncertain realities long extinct, but, with the contemplative spirit of the aesthetic sense, it is possible to hear, and express, reflections upon the tonal environments and atmospheres in which these artifacts were conceived.

View, World

Work of artistic merit is of paramount importance.

Nonetheless, the perspective of the artist is revealing.  My own is undeniably United States, Southern, Native American, of Wales, Germany, Great Britain, Appalachian poverty, Protestant Gothic, Stoic Realism, and Eastern European obscurity.  I am one who hears what others see.

Image Culture

The self-reliant and self-sufficient artist is not infinitely malleable.

To such a one as this, oppression and celebrity are equally worthless in the light of the creative act.

These are appearances, nothing more, and neither death nor worldly success diminishes the reality of expression.

The Anvil into Tartarus

Culture will not be chained; it moves at the pace of those who are free to create.

Within living memory, the music industry plunged into an abyss of failure from which it will never recover as a direct result of attempts to define and manipulate culture to the advantage of insular controlling interests.  The result was what remains, an assembly line producing predictability and relentless tedium.

This fact allows for no sympathy whatsoever, other than for generations of artists and listeners who will have very little experience with more than the most shallow and vapid reflections of authentic musical expression.

The truth is simple: one does not control culture, but defends it and allows it to progress according to its own lights.  Yet, even now, this same scenario is unfolding in practically every aspect of culture, including the worlds of art, politics, academics, sports, and, of course, communications media.

Expansion or Collapse

The critical mind regards closely what it perceives imaginatively.

This is the determination of what is real, and what only appears to be so. Only one will yield to the effort necessary to create authentic expression, while the other will conjure the spurious.

Paradox and Elevation

One surrenders to art, and one creates.

One creates, and one is liberated in all things.

Dare

Consider the perspective of the audience.

To do less is neglect.  To do more is inconsequential. The audience will be perceptive, or not.

Degrees of Light

Every artistic effort has value, whether great or small.

Every artistic work will have greater or lesser meaning according to the will of the artist.

Direct Approach

Skeptical of appearances, the artist chooses means and method of expression.

One may reasonably expect an objective perception to be taken as meaningful, in that it depicts to the greatest degree possible an understanding of the real world, yet this is rarely the case.

In communications media a tedious subjectivity is the predominate attitude, and its attendant facile projections of everything from a nihilist perspective to a spurious intellectual tone are absorbed and parroted throughout the social fabric.  Better to expect nothing, and act with autonomy, if that is what honesty demands.

Apatheia

Autonomy belongs to those who will accept it.

The artist, composer, writer, athlete or scholar is no more or less free than any other person, and is equally subject to the forces of history and the demands of the present day.  Nonetheless, it is never the case that one must allow oneself to be coerced or forced to venture one opinion or another on those things upon which such judgement is to be held in abeyance, that is to say, upon those issues that will never be settled.  What one observes are facts, what one expresses are perceptions that may be objective, subjective, or neutral.  What is of greatest importance is whether or not such an expression is real, or merely an appearance.  This is the essential nature of creative purpose.

Lacking Precedent

Seek art now.  Right now.

A vague undercurrent of uneasiness and anxiety pervades contemporary cultural perspectives.  In fine, it is the fact that the technology for creative expression is everywhere within reach, and yet the resulting creative work that should be expected is nowhere to be found.

Loss of the Contemplative

A shallow view of technology suggests that it allows the user to "defy limits".

Such a view reflects limits that technology has already brought to bear against the imagination.

Tabula Rasa to Total Effect

Sensory impressions, experiences, contemplation, abstract ideas.

Thus thoughts, choice, media, and expression, reflecting the subjective sensibilities of the artist and objective realities as well.  What is ultimately revealed is being in the world.

Fire, Forge, and Force

To re-create is not enough, and futile.

The great themes and visions must be re-formed.  All the arts, philosophies, schools of thought, aesthetic systems and methodologies shrink in universal estimation as they become effortlessly accessible, and are realized in only the most petty, shallow ways. Comprehension fails entirely, lacking all substance.

Mention the concerto, the tone poem, or "The Birth of the Cool" and be prepared to meet blank stares or pathetic dissembling. Existentialism, Taoism, Cubism, and Impressionism alike are met with all the depth of interest and enthusiasm of a dray horse.  These are, in fact, not effortless at all, and their reality will not be apprehended to any degree without arduous effort.  There is no alternative, yet shamming is as ubiquitous as it is intolerable, as if those who claim to have read Eliot or Burroughs, listened deeply to "Rhapsody in Blue", or experienced a moment of Zen have actually done so.  If it were so, indeed, many aspects of culture would be entirely different than they clearly are.

Such things as these must be brought back to life, by the force of will and creative effort necessary to illuminate them as newly, essentially desirable, and as central to human progress, as digitized information is to contemporary technology.  And this is by no means a likely event.

Within the Unexpected

Every perception awakens with sudden change.

Here, in conditions outside the ordinary, art and reality converge.

Asymmetric Effect

Predictability is toxic.

It is the death of art, and ultimately of culture. It is written on the stake driven through the heart of American rock music; it is the nemesis yet of American jazz, and of the global avant-garde, not only in music, but in every field of cultural endeavor.  Even so, innovation is quietly suppressed, or damned with faint praise, in the erroneous, elitist belief that the listener lacks the intellectual and emotional wherewithal that is necessary for forward-thinking, or, worse, that the listener is little more than a mindless consumer whose dull appetites must be directed toward the "just" ends of a kind of (commercially acceptable) political correctness.

As composer and artist, I respect the listener, and am not subject to such grotesque errors.  And thus it is that I have spent four decades pursuing and perfecting compositions and recordings that cannot be forced into a mold or followed to inevitable conclusions, even with- no, especially with- repeated listening.  I will not compromise.  I do not expect less of my listeners.

Concealed Energies

Let there be no confusion: it is the artist who defines art.

Those who say otherwise have other agendas; those who allow their art to be defined by others may be many things, but they are not artists.  The likes of these are ubiquitous, found everywhere from print media to "web presences", all embraced by "endowment" managers, cultural nabobs, academic sycophants and political bureaucracies.

I, like other artists, define my terms.  All the rest exist in a miasma of glorified fraud and waste.

This, too, is what it means to listen, and hear: to discriminate between the real and the falsified.

The Sounds You Hear

I don't "make music" in the traditional sense, though I have done so previously, for decades, in fact.

Generally speaking, music involves forms, arrangements, harmonies, melodies, genres, and a host of sophisticated and technical concepts that define it as an art form.  Boston's Berklee College of Music comes to mind as a contemporary institution focused on these matters.

I am only interested in sounds as they are encountered in the course of events, and with developing their combinations in the way of an artist applying paint to canvasses that are continually in motion with tones and imagery.

To the Purpose

The art of listening clarifies perception.

I compose accordingly, engaged in producing this total effect. This is a means to listen, and hear.

Totality

Art exists in a broad spectrum combining concepts, gestures, performances, and objective works.

Impressions, perceptions, and ideas that cannot be put into words must be articulated by other means, each of which extends the cultural vocabulary of the human condition.

Strike Counter Strike

Collective idealism can never tolerate art.

But this is an ancient idea.

Art is the expression of an autonomous individual, one who takes a measure of reality and expresses that measurement.  What matters is the discernment necessary to evaluate whether a work is a true reflection or a falsification.

Critical Clarity

"Feeling" is not reasoning.

No artist maintains credibility or integrity who claims purely subjective and emotional perspective is superior to established fact, and no such expression rises to the level of art.

Lies and propaganda may be interesting for what they are, but culture and history remain objective in judgement, and uncaring as to whether they are viewed as unkind.

The foundation for intellectual and perceptual elevation is Reason, a point of departure that is most essential, even as the transcendent sense of being rises beyond all understanding.

Impermanence, Transformation

Detachment clarifies perspective.

Reality changes, while perceptions and emotions do not always follow.

View and Variation

Art expresses belief and judgement.

Certainly this means art represents a philosophical perspective, whether viewed as a representation of reality or as gesture alone. To interpret or to simply experience any work implies a philosophical choice.  Were it otherwise one would have no choice, other than to accede to, or impose, diktat.

What cannot be expressed directly can, and will, be evoked by other means.

System

Nothing is random, but only apparently so.  It is an appearance only.

Everything has a cause, and in terms of the finished work, that is the role of the artist.

Where Monsters Roam

Observe the decline in prominence of the arts.

If technology alone directs culture, information is everywhere available and nowhere internalized.

This is a failure of the imagination generated by an extreme sense of self-importance brought on by "connectivity".  It is a state of illusion, one that dulls and devitalizes the creative sense.

Knowing

The artist creates perceptions and impressions.

These will be accepted or rejected on face value, or, in certain individuals, they will become knowledge of things beyond appearances. Who genuinely perceives, views, listens?

For most, this will remain a mystery.

The Uncanny and the Avant-Garde

Assemble elements both predictable and popular and there is nothing unexpected.

Now strip away, by degrees, these elements. That which was recognizable evolves toward the unknown, taking on an alien aspect while remaining somewhat within the realm of experience.

This is the aesthetic beauty of the unexpected, outside the bland, dull order of shock and offense.

Bell in the Fog

One who recognizes objective reality and deals with it accordingly creates with visionary clarity.

The worst circumstances are nonetheless actionable to such an artist. Corruption, like every element of culture, increases until it exceeds its boundaries, and thus its possibilities, then grows weak and declines, sometimes precipitously.

Whenever possible, act; when action is not possible, gather strength.

Force and Limit

Engaged in the creative act, it is possible to maintain focus on the outcome.

Trace expression from aesthetic concept through emotional and intellectual evaluation, and what is significant is total effect.  All else reflects the cultural climate, regardless of the degree to which any personal, subjective, and objective forces combine in composition and execution of the work.

Grasp of Reality

Historically, art directs attention and reflects cultural direction.

Dictators and tyrants have always punished artists with whom they were in contention, but it is only since the twentieth century that such base, evil impulses have become pervasive in a general culture overseen by internationalist media promoting global conformity of thought.

And thus it is that the artist rebels against a new dark age.

To Rise Above

The artist chooses, and afterwards the only choice is forward.

This is transcendence: to rise beyond circumstance and obstacle, ridicule and contempt.

And this is expression, as opposed to pretension, which is defined by attachment.  Attachment to the self, to recognition, and to the lesser things, wealth and personal power. These have no significance beyond themselves.

The way of the artist is elevation.  Above, beyond.

Reality, Gesture, Object, Effect

Balance reason and the intuitive.

The creative act expresses synthesis of idea and media; it is in flux until it is complete.

Less and Excess

Impression is foundation; expression is judgement.

If the artist expresses sagacity, the work confirms clarity of perspective.

Culture Counter Culture

Art implies faith in perception and artistic vision.

Those who will not trust enough must never be trusted.

By Now

Cultural progress is in difficult straits.

Everywhere cultural expression is superseded by grasping ideology, and the loss to forward thinking is substantial.  A kind of socially-engineered suspension of intellectual risk that stultifies critical thought has generated, over time, a lack of vigor, even a dazed timidity, in the arts.

In every form and manner, give voice to truth. To deny the existence of truth is to deny life, and to know nothing.

Attention and Immersion

What most consider to be "culture" is, plainly stated, too easily grasped.

The fact that one experiences does not necessarily mean that one comprehends.

Listen, Hear, Know

Art in any medium conveys ideas. In a word, art speaks.

Denial of objective meaning does not change facts. Art confirms when all else fails or falsifies.

Beleaguered

From any perspective, the persistence of failed ideas is truly insufferable.

Neither artist nor culture can thrive is an atmosphere poisoned by absurd ideologies and dogmatic denial of the fundamental right to call into question what one collective or another asserts to be "settled issues". Clearly, these are viewpoints that operate to the advantage of one at the expense of another. Expression will be free, and if not, it will be pointless.

All Costs

One critical cliché suggests that, at one time or another, society is "ready" for certain works of art.

This suggests a belief that human character is infinitely malleable, a common error among political ideologues who would define and limit culture.  The idea is not without some merit, but it fails to take into account individual force of will. It is the nature of rebellion to find its expression in those who will bear the yoke of responsibility, but who cannot tolerate the idea of any form of subjection to a mindless conformity.

Adapt

Those who know nothing of culture create certain self-evident conditions.

Brute ignorance and dead-end apathy are not the artist's concerns, but they must be overcome nonetheless.

Undetermined

Music is everywhere.

Yet musical culture, with its myriad facets, has vanished, absorbed into a single, all-encompassing media perspective.  The term "rock-star" is now used as an adjective that has nothing to do with music; living examples number fewer than a dozen, and less than a handful of these are genuine, consequential artists. The dead bury the dead.

Ultimately, the artist must shoulder the burden of the real, wherever it leads.