Time, Mind, and Ear

Historical perspective engenders foresight.

Hear, listen, apprehend, and approach.

Ambience and Environs

Atmospheres encompass unique variables.

Sound compositions designed to reflect and express the effects of these variables require methods and strategies altogether removed from musical processes in general, being more akin to recording and combining environmental events than arranging instrumental and vocal music.

Yet these are not random processes, but relate to the more expansive and subtle configuration of human perception and the totality of all things.

Confrontation, Contradistinction

The phenomena of existence present themselves, to be perceived and apprehended as real.

Certainly this is clear, yet it does not go without saying because appearances may be misinterpreted, sometimes intentionally, to support one's perspective or world-view, for example.  And nothing good can come of it.

Rather than stoke the fires of temperament, my intentions are to design sound works that may, in fact, subdue emotion; rather than create linear music, I establish aural settings and allow sounds to emerge as they are perceived in everyday life.  Though these pieces are directed and stylized toward enhancement of aesthetic effect, the more contrived and artificial nature of linear music, in contrast, can be distinctly observed and noted by the interested listener.

Reinvention

Tone and mood will not remain static in the rise and fall of things.

Integrity is continuity.

Stylized Points of View

Art presents perspective.

Whether visually, or through sound, movement, poetry or sculpture, representation of perception creates communication, and thereby emotional connotation, ideas, and perceptual feeling may be conveyed beyond the obstacles of distance and time.

Whether simple and direct or sophisticated and finely wrought, the value of experience is given new reality through shared personal expression.

Spirit II

These recordings represent sounds and patterns I hear in surrounding environments as accurately as I can delineate them.  

Between humorless mediocrity and mindless absurdity there are numberless variables, and outside either extreme may be found sincere gravity on the one hand with keen wit on the other.  Within the dynamic between the real and the spurious lies the balancing point of personal perception and artistic representation.

Completeness reveals itself in total effect, in art and in life.

Pareidolia

Giving significance to sounds is a function of emotion and intellect.

Experiencing aural imagery in the inner ear of imagination to complement the sights and sounds of the surroundings, I work to bring these peculiar impressions and perceptions into compositional and concrete forms.

Part, Whole, Monad

Every change effects every other change.

The totality is glimpsed, heard in fragments, felt within and without, rather than experienced directly.

If and When

Culture will not long conform to the expectations of those who attempt to manipulate it.

The myriad aspects of cultural relationships rise and fall according to the totality of their diverse natures, limiting possibilities of domination and control by virtue of impermanence and change.

Those who realize this act accordingly, in the arts and in every aspect of human endeavor.

Changing and Changeless

Consciousness is music, the vibration and pulse of being.

The river remains the same, being in a continuum of change.  This is life in the moment now through all times and places, at every age and in every direction, and it is so in the eye of imagination.

Now listen to the river, and hear it flow with the inner ear.

Clarity, Simplicity

Beyond interminable expression of inflamed passions, set expansion of consciousness to music-- that is to say, design sound works complementary to the opening of the mind, in harmony with the satori of spiritual, intellectual and aesthetic realization.

Everyone experiences various degrees of direct perception from time to time; those for whom it is a rare event sometimes err in believing it to be of a mystical nature.  It is no less an epiphany, even so, to set aside ego, symbol, perspective, emotion and world-view to gain wider, deeper, contemplative awareness with its associated insights.

The art of sound may indeed convey such engagement with life, as well as other concepts beyond those of emotional attachment and obsession.

Wind Through Clotheslines

Mundane views of music are self-perpetuating.  The art of sound may represent more, for example, than crude, naive emotions and transient attitudes.

Look up from the work of the day, drawn, not by a distraction, but by an irresistible perception.  It is an epiphany leading to a contemplative state of mind; some see it as awareness of the unity of self, soul, and reality.

To convey such experience through sound is to uplift and intensify meaning, consciousness, and being.

Seeing, Listening. Being, Patience.

Observe the unexpected.

Awareness of the emergence of patterns that develop at a distance from those deemed regular and constant demands foresight.  Discernment balances idea and action, envisioning possibilities in the progress of experience through sense perception, symbolic thinking, moral reason, and restraint.

Meaning must be made manifest within the artist to be revealed through the arts. Finding the unique within one's experiential setting, though arduous, opens the eye of imagination and the inner ear.

Insight is not effortless.

Fundamental Vision

Every composer's work is predicated upon choices.

One need not make extraordinary personal efforts to keep the words and work of, say, John Cage, alive.  Technology will serve that purpose.

But how does one keep ideas alive?

By giving them form.

Originative Will

The independence of the creative imagination in inviolable.

The artist experiences, perceives, apprehends, chooses, and expresses.

All else is secondary to expression and total effect.

Displacement, Transformation

The unconscious mind conveys perception, emotion, and idea in symbolic forms.

These are the impressions of dreams and heightened states of consciousness, and may be at times absurd, portentous, and uncanny.

Artists who seek meaning will experience and express it in their chosen milieus, as will those only capable of meaninglessness.

Echo and Illusion

Not all sensory perceptions have clarity; not all artistic expressions convey an apprehension of the real.

Delusions persist about the nature of reality long after formative memories are forgotten.  Not all meaning is derived from material experience; abstract values are not scientifically measurable and quantifiable, but such things as honor and mercy exist, are perceived, understood, and comprise knowledge of life.  As conveyed through the visual arts, for instance, or through writing and poetry, music, and dance, moral reason is elevated.

To seek and express the ineffable with probity and lucidity is both philosophical challenge and artistic obligation for those who envision the unity of all things.

Listening with Care-- Pop and Other II

Many enjoy being constantly surrounded with music.

Others-- including numerous listeners, musicians, composers-- prefer to listen on their own terms.

Those in the latter group focus on sound differently and approach music consciously, for their own reasons.  Some have personal and emotional viewpoints, or listen contemplatively; the creative musician will often have an analytic ear for technique and style, the theorist for effect and insight.

While virtually everyone listens from time to time just for fun, it is the way of the artist to hear possibilities, to think ahead, and to reach for unique moments of perception and perspective.

Hearing, Not Hearing

In activity, following the motion of events, take notice of the limitations of perception.

Boundaries to sensory awareness are not always related to issues of concentration and distraction.

Consider lack of will, failure of intent, the self-absorbed mind and unrestrained emotions that cloud consciousness, given the changing conditions and flux of being common within everyday reality.

Every creative endeavor, whether in living well or in artistic expression, demands conscious, individual choice.

Déjà entendu

As memory and experience reference sound events in the context of immediate perception, a sense of ambiguity may arise.

Anticipation is confounded as expectations are defied by combinations of sounds and tones that imply familiarity yet go unrecognized.  This state of mind and emotion, merging the known and the utterly strange, evokes an awareness of the uncanny.

Such phenomena may endure until a sound or musical piece is recognized, whether within moments or over the course of years, and additionally in the form of sounds once experienced that are never again heard in the same way.