Critical Awareness

The brain is not the mind, any more than the organ of listening is the inner ear.

Studies conducted at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 2014 concluded that large numbers of people preferred pain, specifically an electric shock, to being alone with their thoughts.

Such conditions of mind, culturally reinforced, as they are, by everything that stigmatizes mysticism, spirituality, and the uncanny, are unnatural, even dangerous. Clearly, what is called transcendental vision, and even the simple daydream, reflect human perceptions and potentials, and not abnormal, morbid realities.

In contrast, sound art composed to enhance listening imagination can evoke the contemplative states, as described by Boethius, that illuminate consciousness and unburden perspective.

The composer will do well to remember the essential qualities and purposes of art, and especially their incalculable value to humanity.

Atmospheres d'art

These compositions evoke undistracted, extended, contemplative moments.

With sound, create the double, or mirror image, of auditory environmental settings and events.

Arc of Time

Events go unnoticed.

The brain filters perceptions, yet is influenced by focus and intent.  It becomes necessary to develop awareness by learning to perceive what is ignored in the everyday scheme of things.  This changes the nature of experience, opening the mind's eye and the inner ear.

Then the world represented by the artist is clarified in seeing, visualizing, listening, and by composition, whether with sound or the written word.  What once dominated is at a distance, and what seemed like a lifetime is a moment.

Stand By

Age of technocracy.

Unchecked, no curiosity or purpose, no belief in something greater, no aesthetic vision, no concept of the mystical or the uncanny.  And it falls to the artist to say: this is not living, not experience. No.

Unawareness and its Opposite

Intense focus and unnatural importance are attached to inconsequential events, people, and things.

One chooses aesthetic purpose, rather than meaningless cultural and social perspectives that focus on mundane diversions, not to disengage from experience, but to embrace reality.

Experiment

Stand at a remove from contemporary culture.

Forgetting the artifacts and figureheads carved into the moment, consider what remains of reality.

Cognizance, Awareness

Among the things the artist can control are perspective, execution, symbolism, and tone.

Among those things the artist cannot control are the opinions and perspectives of others.  But this is not an issue.  What matters is the creation of artistic representations in any media that convey, with clarity, the reality of experience.

Along

The moment now moves with sound.

Though the sound movement may have the semblance of brevity, it neither begins nor ends.

Experience, Imagination

Find the sonic atmosphere free of interference, as it is, without expectation or musical bias.

Create the objective semblance of such an atmosphere with manipulations of sound media, strictly in the form of auditory imagery.  Having gained this understanding and expertise, reveal atmospheres perceived with the inner ear.

Follow

One uses, or is used by, technology in cultural contexts.

The composer who comprehends and applies theory develops ideas as they emerge in processes, and individual expression carries the day.

Embrace

The human and natural worlds are interrelated, not separate.

So the composer cannot say, I seek to replicate nature, as if removed from it.  All sound forms exist within the limits of perception, and none are alien to the creative mind and process.

In and Out of Place

In musical terms the idea of order relates to a perceptual recognition of sequences.

Such sequences are critical even in the most complex works, and represent exquisite degrees of human design. These arrangements of musical elements are systematic and purposeful.

Nonetheless, alternatives to these designs need not produce chaos and noise. They may instead be composed as representations of any number of processes of objective reality for which there are no human equivalents, specifically such things as the motion of atmospheric currents, tidal ebb and flow, erosion of stone, and other phenomena.

Distance, Echo, Reality, Being

Sound in memory delineates a subtle understanding of experience.

But this is inconsequential unless there is a more profound understanding of order, one which extends beyond linear pattern, repetition, and variation.

Position, Eye and Ear

Give attention to visual and aural perspectives in the same manner: as potential works of art.

As the eye of the imagination conceives visual representations, so may the inner ear originate and develop compositions in sound.

Sounds of Reason and Free Will

Penetrate the twilight between worlds, if you can, and you will find a place few reach.

Many claim this quest by many names: few begin the journey, fewer still set foot in the right direction.

Those who hear with the inner ear, with persistence and personal sacrifice, may yet perceive this world with a consciousness greater than themselves.

No one knows.

Sound Only

Music is one form.  Sound is many forms.

Those attached to music create music.  Unattached, one listens, and hears, and creates accordingly.

Sound and Setting

Perceptions that contribute to setting aside attachments release contemplative states of mind.

This is the simple process of combining sound and setting for total effect. Yet few make the effort, as it cannot be of value without first comprehending the purpose of distinguishing appearances from reality in approaching the phenomena of existence.

Here, Now

"Passion" has its limits, most of them inconsequential.

The sounds I am interested in creating and presenting are those that reflect not only the human condition, but humanity's unique place in the universe.

Nothing More

The intent of mass media is exploitation, and it is transparent in all its applications.

Manipulation of any group is facilitated by a contrived scenario of desperation and excitement.

One Take

The mind filters and assembles and evaluates perceptions.

Culture informs consciousness, but the strength of that culture and consciousness depends on the individual who will not be yoked to the wheel of collective vision.