Spells

Those familiar with the cyclic nature of reality understand impermanence, gain, and loss.

History lends itself to foresight, science to progress, and the arts, to enlightenment, even more so than the philosophical perspectives with their degrees of specificity.  It is the individual whose senses are opened through artistic expression, and the individual who must grapple with the implications of the artistic work.

Setting and Psyche

Contemplative space is itself an artistic accomplishment, whether created or discovered.

Noise renders even the most comfortable and visually beautiful place squalid, burdened by intellectual and spiritual neglect.  Everyone has endured this, and it is far too common.

Composer and listener share common bonds, and first among them are goals of elevated experience.

Integrity of Potential

The arts survive.

Decline is a fact of culture.  Ideas originate, prevail, and find their final forms. The arts never reach a state of finality.  To be continually filled and continually emptied out is the nature of expression.

Culture Paradox

Observe the "information society".  Find knowledge ubiquitous, literacy merely functional.

When this plethora of information leads to the assumption that the possession of an internal fund of knowledge is unnecessary, the error is one of profound consequence. Consider only the implications of failed, archaic, totalitarian ideas impressed upon art, politics, and the social order because their outward appearances give the uninformed the specious impression of "novelty". Yet this is of very little moment in comparison to the mass abdication of critical reason it presupposes.

Thus the essential nature of the contemplative, and of atmospheric sound art to enhance reflection.

Wax, Wane

Attainment of intellectual expression is a goal and focus of art.  It is noble, and desirable.

This is because of lasting impact, the shaping of future events, and what might be called the transmission of cultural progress through evolving ideas.

As a perspective this is easily lost upon society, and the momentum of reason difficult to gain.

Observe, Then Question

At no time in human history has music so absolutely saturated culture.

Thus it is taken for granted, devalued, viewed as a "given", without consideration for the labor of the trained musician or the intellectual rigor demanded of the composer, arranger, and songwriter, who are themselves considered marginal figures.

Progress of Being

Experience aesthetic meaning and perception is altered; life is changed.

Aesthetic meaning leads inevitably to a sense of awe.  Art, as representation of reality, evokes this.

All else called "art", regardless of form or scale, is mere cultural propaganda.  Nothing more.

Rhapsody

Overcome the boundaries of definition.

The alternative already exists: perpetuate the same thing in different forms and nothing more.

It is necessary to move beyond a synthesis of styles and influences and into imagination itself, there to order sound in new terms that may be refined, clarified, and expressed through replicable concepts.

The Artificial and the Reflective

To perceive the aural environment, listen without the presence of music.

The contrast with the musical environment, or with "environmental" music, is instantly apparent.

Sound imagery may be constructed in an aesthetic way without the stylistic elements that commonly define music, and in doing so the composer creates a more authentic reflection or representation of the "atmospheric" environment.  But make no mistake: such sound art is no more created randomly than actual environmental patterns are random in nature.  There must be cause and effect processes that the composer may influence and replicate in compositional terms; these techniques and methods are the unique intellectual property of any composer working in these peculiar experimental modes.

Perception is revelation.

Spaces, Tones, Movements

I am interested in aesthetic combinations of sound events.

The elements, theories, and techniques common to what is generally understood to be music, even in their most "primitive" forms, are far superior in their complexities and sophistication to the sound art I envision, design, and produce using entirely different concepts and methods.

These compositions are not about creating such things as songs, but rather perceptions, in the form of of settings, atmospheres, and contemplative states of mind enhanced by sounds.

At Liberty

These are... interesting times, as the Chinese curse puts it.

Art is not everything, and certainly it is not the only thing.

But one who does not recognize its potential, its power, and its capacity to accelerate or inhibit change both personal and cultural is, to be generous, rather foolish, and most likely, easily led.

Now and Everywhere

Ars longa, vita brevis.

Hippocrates continues the observation, finding "opportunity fleeting, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult".

So the arts demand action, and the delineation and representation of experience,  There is no time for considerations regarding gain and loss.  There is only the time that remains.

Unless and Until

The mind does not process environments in their entirety.  It limits, filters, and focuses.

The individual who is cognizant of the extent to which culture influences awareness and intensity of interest has a broader range of perceptivity, and thus choice, than one who is not knowledgeable in such matters.  This is the essential understanding that the arts can manipulate as well as illuminate.

Cloud-Hidden

At the nadir of cultural decline lies ignorance and apathy and self-absorbed complacency.

Since neither art, nor its understanding, are effortless, intellectual curiosity cannot be neglected by those who would gain the broader, deeper perspectives on life the arts reveal.

This is a critical contemporary issue, and its most odious aspects are intentionally reinforced by the elite institutions and mass media under the guise of "populist" egalitarianism.  Since these conditions are, in point of fact, the direct results of social engineering aimed at producing an anemic, totalitarian, collectivist mentality, the resolution of this cultural crisis is far from certain.

In any event, the work of the artist moves forward, openly or underground.

The Mob Falls Silent

The artist is agent of change, the artistic work a reflection of cultural dynamics.

Speak of the modern and reference more than two hundred years of progress.  Observe the clamor and obsessions of the contemporary and the dim fantasies of the past two weeks, months, or hours glare in and out of focus.

Facing subjection to immediacy, the tyranny of contemporary whims, pseudo-intellectual fads, and academic political correctness, the modern artist will never yield.

Post 1500.

Subtleties at the Edge

Cultures, societies, and entire civilizations endure loss.

History and art remain to delineate degrees of perceptivity that once were within reach of those willing to do the work necessary to attain them.  None difficult, they are simply not effortless.

Existential concepts, Zen, mysticism, aesthetic elevation, Stoic equanimity, and direct awareness of objective reality are among these ways of being and living in the world.

History records and describes, art directs the mind and will.  Both sustain, and sometimes restore.

The artist as composer observes the world, hears the possibilities, and works to reveal.

Sonic Setting

Perception of sound registers far more than "music".

Yet cultural norms would have it that only "music" is the creative apex of sound composition. This is absurd on its face, as is the idea that "experimental" music must lead to meaningless noise.

Sense the beauty of sounds as they evolve without interference in all surroundings, whether urban or pastoral, and take this aesthetic into the context of artistic expression, for example, sculpture, collage, cubist perspective, or impressionism. Let "music" exist according to it's elements and techniques, but listen beyond into uncharted areas of imagination. There lies the future.

The Adventurous Journey

Limits present themselves.

It is never necessary to seek them.  It is always necessary to transcend them.

Listen ahead.

Past Immediate Perception

It is possible, I believe, to listen ahead.

The inner ear may perceive with foreknowledge of what is to come, and the composer can develop means by which to act according to such understanding.  This may have an impact on style, sound production, delineation of arrangements, selection of tonal qualities, and so forth.

It is common knowledge that large numbers of intelligent listeners have no interest at all in the state of contemporary music, for the simple reason that it represents unimaginative creative exploitation of well-trod territories. The music industry will not pander to independent thinkers, who must discover the possibilities on their own.

Four Minute Mile

One may be competitive in life, and ambitious.

As an artist, nonetheless, one challenges oneself, and oneself only. Anything else is nothing more than the appearance of a thing that has no reality in the truth of expression.