Complement, Totality

Merge thought and sound.

Such an experience suggests not linear movement through time, but expansion of being.

Sangfroid

The natural state of things is neither random nor chaotic.

Cultural disorder is always reflected in music, but this is a contrived appearance. The true disorder of noise, confusion, disturbance, agitation, and illness is found in the unquiet mind, and represented by stylized musical compositions and performances that speak to diverse levels of individual alienation and social unrest.

While this may be interesting, for what it is, it is rarely necessary or desirable, even when it rises, as a footnote to history, to the level of art.

What is essential is clarity and balance in the face of reality, whether it rises in tranquility or through a fierce act of will, and the creative courage to realize these virtues in works of vigorous, well-reasoned expression.

Mobility

Constant movement perpetuates the illusion of freedom.

Most music will further augment this appearance.  But it is no more than this, an appearance only, at times a delusion, thoroughly subjective and emotionally vapid.

The world is not still, and continues apace, forces in motion traveling inexorably toward their respective outcomes.  This is the realm of the real, and the establishment of one's correspondence to it, whether in accord or estranged, is a matter of reason and will, or deficits thereof.

Clarity arrives with illumination or disillusion, brought about through accident or by contemplation and reflection. Consider sound works created to engage thought and preserve equanimity as meditations on the journey of life.

Auditory Engagement

As an active process, listening identifies and analyzes; as a passive process, hearing perceives as one is otherwise engaged in other activities.

With this understanding, sounds may be designed for entirely different purposes than those typical of most musical compositions, and for more interesting and creative pursuits than relaxation and simple diversion.

Atemporal Music

Out of radio and recording technology emerged the three to four minute popular song.

Even so, modern innovations in technology and musical artistry extended the length of recorded works, highlighting the subtleties of composition and expression evident, by the mid to late nineteen fifties, in albums such as Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue.

Now, for composer and listener, time is of far less consequence, and the aesthetic of creative listening anticipates sound works reflecting the nature of these profound changes in both audio recording and the experience of music.

Rise

Ideas must be expressed, concepts realized, and works of art created.

One may have no expectation for remuneration, or appreciation for efforts of any kind.

There are no incentives for creation beyond the need to reach for something, anything, greater than the given mediocrity.

But art will be.

Technique, Style, Impression

The works of an artist stand as manifestations of that artist's will.

Consider sound compositions devoted to the realization of environmental conditions in terms of emergence, dynamic flux, and dispersal.  Such works will reflect deliberation and action as well as individuality of perception and expression, yet they will remain impersonal by design.

The listener will be immersed in atmospheres that have led the composer to vanish from the scene.

Quietude

The natural order of things reflects tranquility.

Just as naturally, cycles of intense activity, storms, and violence shatter the stillness, but afterwards, the clarity of the undisturbed flow of life returns.  Within this flow and these cycles lies the sense of musica universalis, for those who listen, and hear.

Boundaries, Distortions

Media constructs processes of continuous manipulation.

Perceptions may be altered, truth divided in terms of fact and plausible fictions, reason narrowed, subverted, or both, and attention drawn to presentations of spectacle that have no basis in reality.

But let us look beyond the sensational, the superficial, and the absurd.  There is far more to life, music, and art than these hollow appearances.

Crossing the Mind

Contemplation may be considered an art of observation and reflection, while meditation is generally practiced as immersion in the inner consciousness.

Both engage states of mind and being that transcend self-absorbed existence, attachments to material possessions and consumer culture.  In doing so they contribute to the development of spiritual values and refinement of perception.  Each elevates the intellect, enhances emotional moderation and fortifies sensory acuity.

For speculative music and sound art to complement these virtues, composer and listener will do well to envision and realize their forms accordingly.

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Fusion and Individuation

Experience is a continuum overflowing with words, imagery, and sounds.

The unconscious, in perceiving, adapting, and transforming, shapes the content of dreams and the faculty of imagination in myriad ways, contributing to realization of what Socrates and Plato called self-knowledge, and thus to illuminating reason and expression.

This leads to a quest for listener and composer alike, that of seeking the musica universalis, or "music of the spheres", outside the reach of the mediocre and the mad.

Heed, Harken

Attention, as a function of attitude, places value on specific things.

To see and hear contemplatively is to give attention to the fullness of experience.  The senses inform, but cannot value; this is a function of will.  Art may reflect and represent, but only the mind and spirit realize meaning.

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Realization Through Sound

Atmospheres created artificially range from the minimalistic to the extravagant.

But I am interested in speculative arrangements, and speculation involves genuine possibilities, not absurdities or fantasy settings. There is much more happening in the world perceived by the senses and the mind than it is always possible to apprehend.

Spirits of Place II

Sound environments reveal and establish tone, mood, and situation.

The composer's attitude may be apparent, but it is not of primary interest to the listener.  Nor should it be.  It is the set of conditions the listener experiences through sound that suggests the richness of the composition.

Ear, Brain, Sound, Being

Failure to experience and develop the contemplative spirit is, in point of fact, debilitating.

Contemplation and reflection nurture the imagination, clarify ideas and emotional states, reinforce analytic thought and strengthen independent will.

For music to lend its force to such essential conditions of consciousness, it must be composed and produced in ways that focus on the arrangement of those elements of sound that contribute most to immersive, atmospheric environments, within which the mind is as liberated as the physical body can be while dancing or engaged in athletic activity.

Dynamism

The shadow absorbs in stillness, the fire illuminates in motion.

Certainly there must be impetus to create.  But there must be vision and the application of reason, will, and force.

Murmur and Thunder

Observe simplicity expressed in ways grand and ethereal.

The greatest of things are of the most direct and uncomplicated clarity.

Appearances As They Are

Expression, ranging from the legitimate and real to the specious and fraudulent, makes and leaves impressions on the senses, mind, and emotions.

Just as judgement is false if not based upon facts, so the sound of the authentic experience must have a foundation in the genuine, that is to say, in viable settings or environments, rather than in contrived and spurious ones.

The Searching Ear

Stillness is external and internal, in the nature of living atmosphere and of being.

Observant, listening and hearing impressions great and minute, ordering and analyzing the mundane, the fantastic, and the curious: perceive surroundings, shades of meaning, and attitudes of mind.

Timeflow

What is heard:  the essentials for human functioning, then the media.

What is missed:  the subtle, the environmental, the aesthetically pleasing, the elevated, the uncanny; virtually anything outside the realm of the self-centered.