Atmosphere Shift

One of the pub-restaurants.

Someone asks the composer, "What kind of music do you like?"

Oh, I suppose you could say I like anything that does not sound like music.

Trailing

In the rise and fall of things, cultural decline is natural.

Still, it must be remembered that such decline is not an inevitability, but the consequence of choices.

Go

Culture demands messages from its artists.

But the arts endure oppression when the sole message the culture demands is one of affirmation and reinforcement of the status quo.  There is such a thing as a concept of right and wrong, and within the so- called "gray areas" is a single dynamic of momentum that impels ideas and actions in one direction or the other.

The arts move toward elevation.  Without direction, and only reinforcement, culture moves into decline, compelling, if possible, its artists to act as sycophants.  These are not artists, but flatterers, lackeys, and bootlickers.

High Strangeness II

It is said that pursuit of poetry leads to philosophy.

It seems to me that pursuit of art tends toward the mystic; pursuit of sound tends toward the uncanny.

Imitation of the Unseen

Before the thought is the sound.

Being is a mystery; expression, a cipher.

Unreleased Expressions

Cultures that fail to value the arts will soon be bereft of both the works and the artists.

Artists will continue to produce, without fail.

But, as I have done, they will no longer make newly-completed works generally accessible.

Idea and Gesture

Things are done by choice, or by thoughtless instinct coupled with self-absorbed motivations.

I choose to take an interest in the arts, in music, philosophy, history and the sciences.

But one should never miss an opportunity to keep one's mouth shut.  It is a simple choice.

Vanguard Into the Gloaming

Consider the poetic.

...my ghost eye trapped in a camera lens.

Spoken, associate sound, tone, meaning.

How dare I assert these works are l'avant garde vrai?  The avant garde is now no more than a social context,  There are no sound structures such as I compose, productions of will and reason unique to themselves.  Culturally, there is no comprehension, but only vague association with unfamiliar works and "fame".  It is as if canvasses exist to startle Roberto Matta.

But he is time past.

Cut In-- Out-- Up Zone Nova

William Burroughs machine form blank.  "Hear the action?"

No reason to doubt the Old Hand. But reason is learned, not instinct.  Supreme advertisement, contra
human individual, served to burn down.  The meaning between the words.  The tones, not the sounds.

Hear the action?  Sound and subtext, the point of the spear.

Will, Fate, and Other Things

Notes are always essential for any artist.

If the artist must be an island, it will be so. Civilization must be given the written word or culture cannot thrive through transmission of idea, image, thought, instruction.  These exist from one artist to another, across time and space.

The Notebooks of Albert Camus are recommended to artist and discriminating reader alike.

Total Sonic Impression

Utilizing studio as instrument, compose according to sounds of objective experience.

This, then, is singularity of vision: develop aural analogues as perceptual correlates of settings, objects, events, atmospheres, and the contemplative impulse to grasp an infinity of possibilities.

Reality, Intangible

The presence of sound is not, in and of itself, the presence of spirit.

It should not be impossible to comprehend that sound may evoke spirit, yet what is essential is that the contemplation of sound may direct the listener to spiritual awareness and higher consciousness.

The Predictable and the Dead

The term "artist" is devalued, and every artist recognizes this.

Nonetheless, the artist carries on, aware the "preexisting audience" is not the possible one.

Sound, Attitude, Perspective

One hears of the mood of the country and the tone of cultural discourse as factors in critical events.

Perhaps, then, it is worthwhile to consider ways in which the sounds of various cultural environments, including music and its reduction to a continuum of fragments that may be heard throughout all media, similarly reflect, influence, or direct the consciousness of percipients.

Absurdly, this is considered a "dangerous" idea.

Pythia

What is can not become what must be.

This is the nature and challenge of transformation.

Embrace Falling Night

Sustain and abstain.

These are the choices the composer considers before acting to bring sounds into being.

Emotion, Perception

Consider the "feel" of sound.

Artistic choice in matters of representation allows for elements of composition expressing subjective mood and tone, and various degrees of clarity of impression as well. Each, whether working together or separately, contributes to the total effect of the work at hand.

Redefine Sound

Undo the damage of habitual, unconscious perceptions of "music" and "noise".

Discover what does not meet expectations.  Listen to what is not there until it can be heard.

Trash, Treasure

The generic musical forms exist as structured expressions, and cannot simply be abandoned.

Neither should they be subjects of extraordinary emotional attachments. Superior sounds are to be expanded, inferior ones are to be tamed and minimized.  To accept idle immersion in all that comes before is to be desensitized.  Sound is analogous to the experience of being. Being is expansion of awareness and knowledge in this moment now.

Higher, Towards the Eclipse

Musical and artistic artifacts saturate culture at all times.

This does not stop innovation, and cannot stand in the way of experimentation. Audiences may become complacent with an overabundance of what were once riches. The artist will not.