Vision, Sound, Expression

Sensory experience suggests countless possibilities.

Clear the fog of subjective emotion if this is not so.

The Receptive

To project, rather than perceive, is a common source of error in apprehending experience.

This speaks to motivation, habit, attitude, the reasons for creating as well as choosing to encounter art, and whether the composer, painter, photographer, film maker, sculptor, architect or dancer connects or separates from the audience.

Within each individual and each encounter is a degree of choice.

Transience

The casual observer of culture will note everywhere the saturation of trivial content.

The result is a loss of historical tradition, intellectual and emotional clarity, and individuality in favor of the shallow and sensational.

Such are the conditions in which the artistic vision reasserts its commitment to the real.

Elements and Transformations

Cast sounds into the environment, observe their forms, reactions and interactions

Auditory imagery alters as tones cluster and disperse to spread across and throughout distances; the flora and fauna of the imagination come closer to experience.  These are distinctive sonic qualities, contrasting with the predictability of generic music, beautiful for the total effect they produce.

It is not even necessary to think of this as music at all.  It will be what it becomes.

Process Dynamics

In a tone composition, continuous flux may be manipulated, but the object is not control, which would defeat the purpose of creating a state of fluidity.

Impose limits, add and remove elements, alter juxtapositions, colors, and meanings, as a painter does with brush strokes or as a poet modifies diction, breath or phrasing.

Span, Measure, Reach

Time is consumed; energy and emotion expended.

Observe, and consider the aspects of culture to which these things are devoted.

Think, before proceeding, of lasting impressions, and the extent to which effort may uplift perception and understanding beyond the frenetic and ordinary.

Within, Without

Immersion in sound is continuous and often unnoticed.

Listen.

Observe, hear what previously held no meaning.

This involvement is creativity's core, that of knowing and acting upon what must be done through receptivity, deliberation, and engagement. 

Atmosphere, Awareness, Heart and Mind

Generic musical forms are most often associated with their particular emotional appeals and the attention their intensity of expression demands.

Moving away from familiar forms such as these toward concepts of sound as art, the connections made by listeners may be more associated with the cerebral and perceptual, uniting qualities of sound and tone with those of thought and contemplative experience.

The Possible and the Unknown

When ideas and practices are fixed and without variation, decline is inevitable and often permanent. Entire industrial and technological cultures rise quickly with innovation, become monolithic, and collapse under the burden of conformity and stagnation.

The way of the artist is one of vision when there are no possibilities, and of action when the hand becomes capable of what the spirit foresees.

Impermanence, Creativity, Impression

Consider the sounds of the wilderness, and those of civilization.

The river, the plains, the highway, the supermarket: each has associated expectations of sounds and their combinations, just as there are associated expectations with "music".

Set aside expectations.  Create and sustain sound environments reflecting heightened awareness, gleaned from any and all sources of aesthetically pleasing auditory imagery.

Textures

Initial experience is perceptual impression.

Sounds associated with sensation evoke feeling first, then emotional and intellectual connections. Some connections are entirely personal; others may be more objective or abstract, as the directly sensual yields to symbol.

The composer of atmospheric works finds opportunities for juxtapositions of auditory images that can link the delicate and bold, the dense with the ethereal, the urgent with the serene, or any combination that enlivens experience.

I count myself among those whose interests in the art of sound are focused upon expressions of the reflective, the contemplative, and the imaginative.

Opposing Forces

The medium is sound.  Vibrations generated in every possible way create panoramas, of the mind as well as of the environment.  Composer and listener move within these atmospheres, together and separately.

Timeless and universal themes and motifs carry the seeds of future expressions, and these often arrive in contrast to expectations, unfettered by either tradition or rebellion.  The extraordinary takes its own course of possibilities, clashing with the commonplace, beyond the view of entertainment media, the microscope of the cultural status quo.

Aural Radiance

Postulate a musical form in which equilibrium of composition emerges in a gradual unfolding of tones. 

The combination of sounds evolves like a kind of luminosity that expands throughout the atmosphere, altering colors and hues, brightening hidden places and casting ever-changing shadows.

Imagery and Symbol

The observer of art apprehends meaning in visible expression and movement; the listener senses significance conveyed by tone, pattern, and auditory imagery.

In each case meaning is a part of larger connections, both cultural and personal, that arise from the past and are carried forward into the future, enlivened by human perception.

Long Moment

Lose track of beginning and ending.

Compose works that create a palpable sense of timelessness, utilizing sonic structures that contribute to sustaining that feeling.

Facility

Indiscriminate impressions reveal nothing and lead to no conclusive ideas.

Yet any impression may prove revelatory to creative imagination and judgement.  

The Real

Free the perceptions and attention to experience follows.

Consider distinctions between arts that distract and arts that enhance experience.  Musical compositions that turn the attention toward clarity of awareness will do the latter.

The Long View II

A composer may begin anywhere and go anywhere, particularly if guided by vision and principle and willing to put forth the effort required to develop and progress over the long run.

In the world of the arts it makes no difference if inspiration strikes suddenly, as it sometimes does, or if, as in my experience, the work evolves over the course of many decades to become what it is.

There is no alternative to devotion, and no substitute for following the way of the artist.

Intention and Impression

Art may be a barrier as well as a bridge.  As propaganda, it manipulates; as academic pretension, it obfuscates, often as a gambit to deny the self-evident for less than honorable purposes.

Intelligent listeners and observers owe no allegiance to such things, confident in their perceptual acuity and personal knowledge of cultural history.  Human nature will be as it is, while art, music, literature and other works of merit communicate directly, with integrity, to all who are capable of setting aside prejudice to give rational consideration to aesthetic experience.

Reflection and Reflex

In any media, the superficial is initially of paramount importance.  It is the instantaneous impression, the sudden sense of an image and the expression of reality it offers that communicates with force.

At this first critical moment, the percipient does more than observe, and projects emotional interests or needs and a fund of personal information upon the art form as an object of interest.  This may be seen as something of a poetic, or romantic, moment of interaction.

Then, given the receptive viewer or listener,  it is the content of the artistic work that sustains such involvement.  Thus much depends upon whether it is the audience, the personal ego, or the art to which the artist is devoted.