Heard, Overheard, Listening

Every listener encounters sound individually.

Some ears are open, and some are closed.  The same holds true for minds.

New Sonic Awareness

Metaphor, in its most easily recognized form, exists in combinations of words and images.

It is the composition that develops sound as extended, or "epic" metaphor that illuminates a poetic potential in listening as well as unforeseen new directions in music.

Exercise X

Set aside all knowledge and conceptual ideas regarding "music".

Postulate a theory of "music" based solely upon the ways sound phenomena exist and are perceived.

Distant Present

Culture defines; the artist refines.

There will always be a struggle between complacency and risk.

Turning Century

Accept limits.  New York, Shanghai, Los Alamos, Beale Street, under the hot sky.

Defy limits.  These include all things that are merely, but thoughtlessly and oppressively, conventional, stultifying to the imagination, and, of course, totalitarian in nature.

Engagement

Art exists for both artists and audiences.

Consider the nature of art created specifically for audience expectations, as contrasted with the idea of art as an individual expression that exists for an aesthetic purpose generally accessible to the culture as a whole. Both are necessary, yet the latter of the two is the most distinctive, forward-thinking, and essential.

And, without such a perspective as motivates the latter artist and audience, there is no cultural progress in the arts, but only repetition of the predictable.

Elevation and Declining

There are things within the power of the artist, and there are things that are not.

Self-reliance, control, and action are within the artist's power.  The failures of cultures and societies are not.  The artist observes, creates, and expresses.  All else in in flux, and it was ever thus.

Art, Being

Force nothing.

Integrity creates its own order.

Across Decades, Over Hours

Linear forms are predictable, against the nature of reality and change.

Expansive forms develop along mental and temporal dynamics, and may be applied to all conditions, all settings, all arts.  These are the critical strategies and tactics that draw out the future into the moment now.

Understand and Choose

There is personal awareness, and there is "mainstream" cultural awareness.

The former is direct, and real; the latter, indirect, forced, abstracted, and a burden. Yet some will embrace the first, while the many will be subject to the second.  It is a mystery.

Equilibrium

Fully realized expression, in final form, is the end result of applied force.

But this is primitive power, originating in expressive impulse, and it continues beyond single, separate works.  It is power that responds to focus and direction, yet refuses control.

Influence

There are truthful expressions, and ignoble narratives as well.

Some say the artist has responsibilities; others will say the opposite.

Ultimately, it is a matter of trust, for both artist and audience.

Art, Reality, Choice

Knowledge has limits.

Thus critical, creative judgement is followed by action.

In Omnia Paratus

The real world of flux, large and small, rewards the perceptive mind.

The finer the development of critical awareness, the greater the capacity for discrimination between what is, and what merely appears, to be.

In the Balance

Perception of art evokes emotions and ideas.

Thus the attitude of the artist may be everything, or nothing.

Incipient Cultural Rebellion

Culture is more powerful, and of greater value and importance, than politics.

One may follow a line of historical reasoning from Homer and Socrates through TS Eliot in poetry or Pablo Picasso in art, each of the latter giving highly sophisticated and complex visions of reality and the human condition. Academic types studiously analyze and grasp these works on the highest critical levels, yet it is entirely possible to simply appreciate them for their fine and evocative visionary nature.  Then, for no clear reason, doors close.  Creative expression in the modern terms these two artists represent becomes erratic and rare; everything in the manner of the progress they exemplified comes to a halt.  It is as if, culturally, we do not allow ourselves to think of these works as starting points to move forward, but as final statements of no further importance or value.

This absurd shift in cultural attitudes appears inexplicable, but it is not.  It is certainly not the result, as some might suggest, of these artists creating an apex of cultural achievement that can never be approached or surpassed.  To be blunt, they were original, self-motivated artists, and what they accomplished is unique to them, as is the case with any artist of merit and vision.  Neither William Burroughs in literature nor Andy Warhol in the visual arts attempted to amend or extend Eliot's or Picasso's work, but moved forward as original thinkers and creators, while culture lagged, and continues to lag, behind.  This highlights the essential nature of freedom of thought and expression, as well as the critical importance of what Eliot called "Tradition and the Individual Talent" in his 1919 essay of the same name.  What it does not explain is the cultural Sargasso in which the contemporary world has been and continues to be moored.

Yet the explanation, plainly understood, represents nothing more than human vanity and intentional ignorance.  It is the simple refusal to acknowledge human potential as being greater than an ideology of scientific materialism allows, with its attendant, singular and all-encompassing focus upon an end to history and the creation of an ideal, global state, one that incorporates centralized control of socioeconomic forces, which must be, by necessity, totalitarian.

The Universal

There is a balance in artistic presentation, particularly in sound, that is self-illuminating.

A work must be instantly accessible and simple, while simultaneously subtle and complex.

Some work is accomplished in mere moments; other work may take years, and decades.

And that is the way of the artist, to be measured in lifetimes.

Never Less

Take art for granted, and it will be taken away, usurped by mediocrity, replaced by mundanity.

Like learning, exploring, communicating, and mastering any demanding act, art is not effortless.

Exercise IX

Withdraw, at will, from common media culture.

Engage directly with the immediate surroundings. Focus the attention upon objective settings.

Accept the value of the unexpected, and observe the dynamic of perception and experience.

This is the palette of perceptive inspiration and creative action. Seize it, synthesize and utilize it.

Reason and Art

Imagination and will bring potential realities into being.

It is insight and foresight that tell us who we are and what we can be, rather than having no other alternative than to live "in the moment" and passively accept the status quo.

The Creative Act and Its Double

Discernment is always required in recognizing the difference between appearance and reality.

Individualist expression is essential to art, and demands a devotion to strenuous work.  As a social phenomena, individualist expression alone is highly superficial, facile, and usually inconsequential beyond its sociological and psychological implications.  It should not be conflated with art, as is often the case, but viewed as another matter altogether.

An artist's work speaks for the artist, and for itself.

Displacements and Altered Perspectives

There is a balance between the desires of an audience and those of the artist.

Either may move or be moved by art. At issue is always the extent to which the one may move the other, as in the dynamic of the stone in water.

Pop Spoonful

Media is not Culture.

Media does not surround Culture.  It is not possible.

Culture surrounds media, and Culture cannot be captured.

Continuum and Flux II

Consciousness, to the extent of human knowledge, is a rarity in the vast universe.

What we live, know, come to know, and express has value. And it is only a beginning.

Inside, Outside, Over and Beyond

Create art using sound.

To listen and to hear is to experience sound in ways both active and passive.  It means to be fully conscious and also to apply that focus toward sensory perception on the edges of the unconscious mind, that is to say, to develop awareness of sonic events that are not direct and obvious, and that for the most part go unnoticed.

Expression then becomes essential, being the means by which to express the differences between appearances and reality, because the world is apprehended and defined by both.

Exercise VIII

Identify a continuous source of sound.

Give attention to the sound and the surroundings until no longer conscious of the sound.

Recognize, to the extent possible, the moment of becoming conscious of the sound again.

Analyze and note the differences in (1) the quality of sound and (2) the nature of subjective and objective perception each time the sound re-emerges into consciousness.

As in any exercise, make these steps habitual in the pursuit of creative, critical acumen.

Upheaval and Vision

It is nothing to bring about irrationality and chaos.

Only the most arduous efforts can focus and elevate aesthetic beauty out of disruption and turmoil, ignorance and evil.  But it can be done, and it has always been so.

Second Guessing, to Death

Only action effects change.

The contemplative mind yields insight, and the creative will acts accordingly within the parameters of proposed outcomes.  No outcome in any social order is ever permanent, and no total effect within the dynamic of culture is ever fixed and immutable.  To believe otherwise is absurd.

Equally absurd in the context of the human condition are demands for guaranteed outcomes, since these do not exist.  Action based on scientific method, with its associated meticulous refinements, may indeed place the human imprint on distant planets, but no undertaking that is predicated upon absolute foreknowledge of end results is possible in the world of human affairs.

True accomplishment comes from work leading to acceptable conclusions, and these are inspired by belief and confidence in the necessity and wisdom of change in the status quo.  This is the strength of risk, and of faith as well.  Nothing less, and nothing more, is possible.  Choose action.

The Beam in the Mind's Eye

Disaster comes from the failure to question; and so it has been wrought.

Think creatively.  Question self, question culture, question narrative and reality.  Think.

In Decline, Then Rising

Appearances alone are not acceptable.  There must be meaning, and there always is.

One does not allow culture to dictate meaning; neither does one allow it to deny meaning exists.

Mythos

Every artist must speak independently.  I speak for none other than myself.

The progress of art in every form of expression is one of continual revelation.

Exercise VII

See and listen clearly, with self-discipline and simplicity.

Where there is corruption, reject cultural expectations and ideologically conditioned responses.

Vision, Sound, Focal Point

The power of art is shared perception.

Thus the artist cannot allow culture to diminish the arts, beginning with personal, individual work.

Familiar, Yet Alien

No one will deny that current conditions set the stage for future events.

But there are other influences, as yet unknown, that will come to the fore as well.

Actionable Intent

For desired change to come into being, it must be created.

Therefore take action, regardless of scope or scale, and cause will yield effect.

Creative Will

When the artistic impulse balances chaos and order, there is change of a specific nature.

This is change that eliminates and restores, that casts down the superficial and elevates the real.

High Strangeness III

All creative acts engage cause and effect, action and reaction.

Yet some combinations of artistic activity generate peculiar responses that expand past the limits of the expected. The viewer, the listener, and at times, the artist, may be swept up in energies within the psyche that do, in fact, transcend the aesthetic event, and perspectives may be altered in ways that lead to deeper understandings and broader perceptions.

And it should go without saying that the nature of such power is not always understood.

Sphere and Compass

Integrity is the way of nobility.

Thus it is with the artist, if the artist strives for the light, regardless of the endless assaults of the ignorant and benighted.

Echo Sierra Papa

Culture, in the contemporary sense, offers no moments to pause and reflect.

Nonetheless, the failure to give due consideration to reality, history, and experience is great failure indeed; as long as the media, the intellectually mediocre, and a mundane cultural aesthetic offer no more than one benighted perspective after another, the development of the contemplative faculties is not only desirable for the forward-thinking individual, it is essential to human progress beyond the shallows.  Even the very idea of the existence of such faculties, for many, evokes the paranormal.