Creative Will

The attention is continually subject to distraction, the purpose being to capture and direct emotion, idea, and action.  It is then a simple matter to manipulate social, cultural, and economic choices, decisions and events.

Observation of the arts reveals the difference between legerdemain and magic.  It is always evident when a message or external purpose is associated with an artistic presentation, just as it is plainly clear when the effect or meaning of a piece, however obscure it may be, is intrinsic to the work itself.

Knowing the Inner Ear

Discernment questions, but also proposes, interpretation of sensory perceptions.

Listening and hearing determine, for the individual, the aesthetic value of sounds, music, and auditory imagery, unless cultural conditioning supersedes the capacity for making objective personal choices.

Consciousness, Art, Technology

The transmission of culture is not always in verbal or written form, being conveyed by the arts as well.

Visual arts portray symbolic images, and sounds possess myriad symbolic attributes associated with emotions, perceptions, and ideas, suggesting, as they may, states of mind as diverse as those of celebration, ecstasy, and fear.

The ubiquity of media contributes to immersion in these representations, and thus their potential effects upon the psyche.  And while the extent to which composer and listener engage creative experience is certainly a reflection of cultural conditions, it can also be one of conscious, individual choice and aesthetic sensibility.

Stylized Realism

Atmospheric sound compositions reflect incremental changes in the course of events.

The artist gathers and assembles perceptions in accordance with these phenomena, whether they reflect organic or cultural sounds, ideas, and events.

Participating in visions of the extraordinary, one may come to see and hear beyond the general norms and the contrived extravagances that indulge vicarious experiences.

Rising

Subtlety of perception heightens clarity of meaning.

To experience subtlety of expression in the arts is to set aside the obstacles presented by personal subjectivity and directly sense the meanings behind artistic representations. The extent to which one "loses oneself" in experience, and the context in which one chooses to do so, will improve or degrade perception accordingly.

Aesthetic vision and discernment move both artist and audience with shared perspectives, whether toward heightened or enervated awareness, thought, and feeling.

Wandering

The composer's art, regardless of style, reflects aesthetic intentions.

A work may be meticulously planned and executed, spontaneously generated with varying degrees of focus between the contrived and the apparently random, or be designed to unfold within limits in the way of the natural course of things.

In the latter case, I am only interested in a minimal touch, one that contributes to a composition's grace of mood and tone.

What one desires to hear, one creates.

Extending Imagination

The unexplored is everywhere.

Long thoughts, deep books, nuance of experience, visions of possibilities, sounds drawn out from immeasurable distances and disdain for the trifling chaos of the day bring light to the world and the mind.

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.