Depths, Heights, and Futurity

Sounds are set in motion and combined; compositions emerge and may be recorded, transcribed and performed.  In the listening imagination, sensory impressions appear spontaneously, as if out of echo and shadow.

Beyond this point listening takes on a unique and individual dimension that neither the casual listener nor the self-absorbed "fan" discovers without encountering a sense of the uncanny.  One's attention is wholly given over to sounds, as happens in thoughtful reflection upon works of art, and in listening one becomes detached from the sense of self and its distractions, entering a contemplative state of mind and being.

The composer devoted to realizing such a fusion of sound and art cannot be content with transient nonsense and mundane chaos, and strives for representations of environments and atmospheres that reflect elevated perceptions and stimulate the expansion and evolution of consciousness.

Direction and Movement

Contemplative thought and listening, well considered action, and fullness of perception do not come without conscious effort and choice.

Reality is not scripted, regardless of cultural or social expectations. Listeners may be conditioned to types, genres, and forms, but these do not define music any more than external conditions define being and humanity.

In the arts, one may observe both expression and sense of purpose.  As the apparently formless moves gradually toward clarity and breadth of scope, the glaring intensity of the mundane and predictable dissipates and grows dim.

Simplicity and Complexity of Pattern

One may be lulled into a pleasant state of mind by the sounds of wind and rain, waves moving in and out against the shore, or traffic passing through the night.

Removed from surrounding noise, which can, in fact, include recorded or transmitted media, the listener may encounter sounds that do not fit preconceived expectations regarding music, yet be capable of finding these aural images appealing.

Combine sound elements in such ways as to conform to such diverse patterns and atmospheres, including those that occur in cultural or "man-made" environments.

Myth, Music, and Mind

Music appeals to the senses, toward physical movement and ecstatic experience.

These basic and emotionally charged qualities, driven by rhythm and various traditional musical elements, do not form the sole parameters of the arts of sound.  Without intellectual and spiritual energy, expressed in ways perceptive of their natures, what is commonly considered music loses meaning, interest, and value.

Potential Unknowns

The senses and imagination strike together to ignite vision.

Reason balances the process, but the creative act is one of intuition, that is to say, faith.

Sway of the Modern II

There is no "Year Zero" in any real cultural sense.

Modernity eliminates nothing of value, recognizing the existence of the past in the moment now, along with the future.  Discernment, choice, reason, judgement, and vision make that moment new and illuminate things to come.

Expectancy

It is necessary to explore.  Repetition is not viable.

The artist today does not compromise, because there are no incentives to act in accordance with anything less than aesthetic vision and reason, that is to say, truth.

Anonymity has become more highly prized than fame; commercial success offers little more than dubious remuneration; musical styles once universally popular have devolved into feeble, indistinct shadows of their originals.

While what is called music may cease to grow, change, and unfold, the art of sound must do so.

Clearing

The art of thinking begins with emotional restraint.

This is by no means a suppression of feeling, but rather a conscious, deliberate rejection of emotional subjectivity.  Awareness is altered, impressions gain clarity, subtlety of perception is enhanced.

Accordingly, the creative arts that reflect such perspectives are distinct from those motivated by the expression of emotion and personality.

Listen, Hear, See, Go.

Under the burden of subjectivity, the senses cannot be reliable.

What happens to be unseen, unheard, or unapproached by thought and feeling yet remains. Action, stillness, contemplation, perceptivity and creativity become, at times, conscious choices.

And art follows.

Avenue Canyon, Carpet Whisper, Windy Pines

Music enters awareness as various sets of sound patterns, usually songs with which children become familiar. These differ in tone, form, and perceived content from aural imagery produced environmentally, whether found in nature or in settings like streets, buildings and other common areas.

Then comes recognition and understanding; the instruments, beats, chants, popular songs, classical works and diverse artists; hymns, voices, ballads, soloists, stars and superstars, soundtracks and radios and collections of any and all things with melody, harmony, structure and rhythm-- and all are seemingly inexhaustible.

Yet the first world heard before the learned perception of the musical forms and genres is the real world as well; it is change, imagination its catalyst, and its sounds are essential elements that suggest possibilities beyond those given to represent music.

Course of Aural Imagery

Suppose all sounds in continuum.

Regard listening and hearing, to the extent possible, as uninterrupted experience.

Reception, Perception, Apprehension, Knowledge

In the lost realms of reason, it was believed that reality could be approached in objective and transcendent terms.

The senses open, attention is engaged, impressions take place, and then those impressions are assessed by the mind as true, false, or indifferent, depending upon information at hand.

Certainly this implies the need for awareness that the search for critical knowledge is a process that never ends, and that the unknown may be, at times, within one's grasp.

To Eye and Ear, the Real

Much of what is seen and heard happens across time and distance in forms of electronically generated imagery.

Engaging attention with sensations, most particularly those of sight and sound, forming impressions and recognizing a sense of presence, one may apprehend the reality of experience.

But not all impressions, and foremost among them those delivered through technological media, are free of ambiguity.

As one may choose discernment of beauty, so also may one be open to truth. For the artist and the composer, this perceptivity is of peculiar moment, in the determination of the value of replacing the past or discovering the future.  

Mass Mind and Media

The senses are extended by technology, intensified, exaggerated, and in the course of these effects, weakened.

The natural state of the senses, that is to say, awareness unadulterated by anticipation of events grounded in experience of communications technology, may at times appear strange and uncanny.

Direct experience, in such cases, takes on aspects of the mystical.

For such reasons, among many, I choose to take music toward the unfiltered experience of sound events structured to the larger world, and outside the generic forms.

Sound Approaching Mind

There exist deeper mysteries than all those found within the ambit of electronic media.

There are deeper, longer thoughts, and far more distant destinations than are realized in the frenetic commonplace of events as they are now understood.

Connectivity, Representation, Individual Vision

Cultural, social, and personal environs converge and diverge continually.

Observe the ways each alters communication, creativity, and perspective. What is to be seen and heard in the varied settings and conditions associated with each may be rich with ideas, emotions, and implications at certain times and places, yet, at others, meaningless and absurd or intellectually and emotionally bankrupt.

Choice of idea, feeling, theme, and manner of expression guides the artist's hand, whether in the direction of  the common and mundane or toward the ineffable and uncanny.

In the Moment

Observe and listen.

Of the senses, these are of greatest importance to reason and intuition.  See, hear, and reflect upon experience; contemplate the possible and the mysteries of the here and now.

But mine is a Nineteenth Century mind, confronting the quandary of the debate regarding divine order and mundane chaos, unmoved by any desire to be and become no more than a healthy animal.

Grand Air of Experience

Perception informs reason.

Music engages the temporal and the physical, but these need not claim and subdue the imagination.

Their combination may, in fact, bring about a catalytic atmosphere that elevates and liberates the sense of being beyond the material strictures of time and space.

Periphery of Music

At its cultural center the manner of composing and listening to music is representative of the narrow vision of popular entertainment.  There is nothing beyond the generic forms in such a view.

The imaginative perspective seeks aesthetic beauty in all forms, including those in such continual flux that, like the rhythms and patterns of nature, they appear to be formless.

The recognition of such subtleties begins with reason and yields an intuitive grace of understanding, evolving gradually past the mundane until evoking, at times, a sudden brilliant satori of expanded perception.

Motion and Repose, Modernity and Tradition

Advanced technology does not necessarily imply advanced thinking.

Progress and innovation are inconsequential without the perception and assessment associated with reason.  In musical artistry, technique in performance and brilliance in composition mean little if they provide nothing more than transient diversion and entertainment.

To contemplate and reflect upon representations of elevated expression-- as opposed to the merely frenetic and mundane-- is to listen, and to hear, engaging and expanding consciousness in the course of everyday experience.