Culture and the Environs

Go far.

From a distanced perspective it is clear the "culture" surrounding entire populations may reflect individual taste and interests yet be devoid of a single original impulse or expression.

This is vanity and complacency, indicative of a loss of vision, a failure of the spirit of reason and inquiry, and vapid self-indulgence.  One must go beyond, even into the uncanny and unknown.

Oppose, Engage, Evolve

Art first.  All the extraneous nonsense is just that, foolish waste.

Bring together the transcendent sounds.  Elevate the surroundings and thus the culture.

Shadows, Shallows

Observe, as vicarious experience supersedes direct engagement with reality.

Art undergoes transformations that may or may not be absolute and permanent, yet regardless, what was once essential recedes into a past beyond comprehension.

Contribution

Sound may be manipulated as an art form at a distant remove from "music".

Such a statement is outside the context of cultural and academic politics.  It is the simple fact that sound may be used as an art medium, made "problematic" only by the definition, articulation and application of the creative processes involved and the fact that most such experiments are failures.

These compositions, based on aesthetic principles, are the results of successful experiments, ideas, concepts, and theories that may be replicated, refined, and extended.

The Need for Sound Art

The fish, it has been said, is not aware of the presence of water.

The discriminating listener is constantly aware of the sounds of art subverted by "programming".  It is the same set of generic structures adorned with different characterizations and attitudes of style. The artist must transcend this, and provide the listener the opportunity to acclimate to a different state of auditory awareness.

Yet it is effortless to recognize the uniqueness of these aesthetic atmospheres, composed, as it were, of  "reverse-engineered" representations of perceptual sound environments.

Distant Echoes Remaining II

Range of awareness, not complexity, extends and refines consciousness.

Contemplative understanding is not burdened by the complex nature of things.  It is the emptiness of the vessel that makes it useful; the least obtrusive sound may bear more meaning than the loudest.

Field of Listening

It is possible to hear only what seizes the attention.

When this is the case, reality is understood within narrow limits. Aesthetic awareness is more than a refined sense of perception.  It is a survival skill as well.

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.