Wandering Imagination

Travel to an environment in which there is no noise, only the sounds of life.

The atmosphere casts a spell. This is enchantment in the ancient sense, a contemplative state.

And this is the perceptual sense of being we strive to evoke in these Black Mountain School works.

Aside

Observe the extent of contemporary conditioning on the human psyche.

Led to believe there are few, if any, "new" ideas beyond those established as being of extreme significance in the cultural surroundings, audiences of entertainment and the arts are bereft of contemporary voices, ideas, and productions that impel and inspire social awareness beyond the status quo.  This is an untenable scenario.

Free people will not long tolerate such conditions.

Sound Expression

Many make "statements". Few of these are of any moment.

It is a short step from poetry to philosophy; from there, the sound of being is all encompassing.

Bones

Word is expressed in symbol, and through sound.

But the ultimate expression of word is being, represented through the arts of poetry and sound.

Transcend. Elevate.

Rise.

Axis

Civilization is predicated upon the transmission of culture.

The rise and fall of the way of nature is reflected in the Boethian wheel. Neither east nor west, the center also surrounds.  In this manner art emerges in the composition of sound.

To understand this is to listen, and hear, with the inner ear.

Elemental, Abstract, Infinite in Aspect

The contemporary produces popular culture.

But it is the modern. properly understood, without the biases against tradition that first identified its nature, that produces the wider culture, sustaining the abstract values and the permanent things in the course of progress.

Immerse, Sustain

Song forms call to mind emotional states of various durations.

Songs may produce intense bursts of short-term feeling, at best, and little, if any, perceptual change.

In contrast, a sense of expanded, contemplative awareness is the natural outcome of an absorption in extended, atmospheric works, purposely composed to create totality of effect, as opposed to transient diversion.

Place

Consider the internal environment as well as the external one.

Find the balance.  Compose with the sounds of imagination that reflect and represent direct experience and the contemplative attitude of mind that evokes perceptivity of this nature.

Make Real

Become aware.

Put others first.  Ignore the whine of self-importance. Then it is possible to concentrate on perceptual awareness, refine sensory experience, and gain clarity in active thought. Here is the fund of creativity, of works yet to be composed, of sound art.

Dissolve, Converge

The composer must imagine, as the listener must.

Imagine sound coalescing into a different order, unlike music yet beyond the mundane.

Sonic Color

Enclosed by a medical device. Blue light tubes seen through yellow plastic goggles.

The machine runs for seventeen minutes with a bright, fluctuating drone, a long sequence of cycles in slight variance; metal machine music for Van Gogh sunflowers.  From down the hallway and through four walls, scattered across time, the ghostly flourish of beat saxophones.

Stranger Things

Focus concentration on the visual image by listening, and hearing.

This, too, is perception, experience, creativity, and, in a larger sense, the projection of aesthetic ideas sans subjectivity.  That which is distant, that which was silent, is present.

Footsteps on Hardwood Floors

Radio, almost inaudible.

Objects being moved on a counter top. Wind, or air passing through a vent.  Machine noise starts and stops.  Child drops key ring. Unidentifiable low rumble.  Impression of light rain.

In the inner ear, a symphony.

Continuum

Every sound represents an effect; every cause has a source and origin.

The connectivity of every sound is engaged in every auditory perception. While it is not necessary to consider this in terms of mysticism, it is nonetheless interesting to contemplate the furthermost extent of the influence of sounds over the course of time and within the limits of perceptual space.

Realize, Renew

In a living cultural perspective, Time Past is palpable, within experience and imagination.

Whether this is true across the wider social culture is insignificant. With individual vision, the artist sees Time Future within reach, and draws it into light.

Elevate, Decline, Continue

Sound environments reflect the rise and fall of things.

Whether the composer chooses a subjective perspective or simply allows the composition to unfold as it would in the physical world alone is of little consequence, provided the work's total effect is one that reflects aesthetic integrity.

Closed, Opened

Continually stop the ears with mud and the loss is apparent.

Re-learn the art of listening and the perception of hearing.  Think, and perceive.

Recall

Seek the unknown, unseen, unheard.

Imagine, and find the atmospheric sounds that cannot be imagined. Make them real. Listen, and hear. 

Original Expression

It is a simple matter to alter musical perception.

The art of representation in sound is not one that involves additional articulations of percussion, rhythm, melody, harmony, and so forth.

It is rather elimination of unnecessary formal elements that conveys and clarifies perspective in unforeseen and unique ways.

How Imagine

Excessive absurdity: faces buried in phones.

How does one live, and what does one believe beyond the given?  One cannot simply leave it to the "artist", so designated by cultural consensus, to discover the facts and appearances of these matters.

If one must become the artist oneself, so it must be.