Direct Auditory Impression

Subjectivity falsifies.

Acknowledge, understand, refine perceptivity.  Create by virtue of reason and experience. To listen, really listen, is no different than to think critically, that is to say, to reason objectively and incisively.

It is a learned behavior.

Stirring Atmospheres

Atmosphere contributes to attitudes and the shaping of moods.

But while mood and attitude may subjectively color atmospheres, they do not directly alter qualities of the environment.  Surroundings that intentionally reflect perspectives must be created with such total effects in mind. The same concept applies to the development of aesthetic compositions in sound.

What the surroundings suggest, the composer must hear, and translate into representative forms.

Hold Horizons Forward

Authentic expression of vast force overwhelms.

The artist as composer must act with restraint, capturing and sustaining the real dynamics of tone and color that elevate consciousness. Bombast and blather are modes of weakness, reinforcing impotence and inadequacy; the greatest potential is realized by drawing together and fully articulating the widest possible configuration of sonic forms and energies.

Illusion and Cold Light

As an artist, one may not be devoted to the arts at the expense of life's necessities and long survive.

Yet neither may a consumer culture deny the value of the arts while appropriating the contributions of artists. A society that accepts and condones blatant thievery of intellectual property will ultimately incur the consequences of both brutish ignorance and unrestrained self-indulgence.

Regardless, the artist, poet, and composer will not be silenced, nor the dancer paralyzed.

Shifting Cycles

Assume the perspective of media consumer, if you will.

What is revealed is suggestive.  Obviously, media usage reflects and reinforces a shallow sense of self-absorption and self-promotion, and the popularity of particular diversions and entertainment arts reinforce this.

These are the representations of reality that appeal to the common imagination, and that provide the supporters of this culture the climate it deserves, for a time.

And, as the historical record indicates, none of it will have any place in the future.

What is never certain is whether it will be replaced by more of the same, or rather by endeavors that demonstrate a leap of vision worthy of human individuality and civilization.

Beyond, Within Earshot

As the artist may see, so the composer may hear.

It is not possible to measure the immensity of variation in such perceptions.  It is not possible to say, with absolute certainty, that there is no more to experience than the mundane and temporal world.

Listen for shape, color, tone, movement and spirit, and hear more than mere sound.

Throughout the Singular Wave

The contemplative is always revolutionary, because it is beyond the mundane.

The path to realization of the contemplative in aesthetic expression can only be difficult in theory and execution, because it must always be uniquely representative of a greater world beyond the ego of the artist or composer.

There is no middle ground.  The total effect of the work will be effortless and transformative for the percipient, or nonexistent.  And this is beyond the will of the composer and artist.

Above Sensation, Light and Sound

Aesthetic experience is, in a broad, general sense, meaningful reflection evoked through art.

The aesthetic sense, beyond its profound contemplative significance and its contributions to elevated states of being, also seizes upon false perception and dispels illusion.

Thus it is wise to cultivate this clarity of experience, as it extends into critical observation of culture, politics, and other representations of reality.

To Sense

Emotion is energy, whether active or passive.

But emotion is neither vision nor clarity of purpose, and each requires reason.

One must rebel, first and foremost, against irrationality. The artist must see, and the composer must hear, those things that go unseen and unheard in the self-immolation of superficiality and the tyranny of the media-directed spirit of the day, else perish in mediocrity.

The shadows fall in the surrounding world as if the presence of something uncanny announces itself, seizing the attention as if by mystic force.  It is here, an opportunity for shade against the heat, and it appears suddenly and strangely to the distracted mind, as if it is always no more than a mere image, and light years away from common experience.  Lose the facts of reality and lose culture, and life.

Direction

One must be culturally aware.

This does not mean one must necessarily be a participant, but to be cognizant of events, ideas, and attitudes is essential to critical awareness, even if one moves contrary to prevailing winds.

Collapse and Rise

Time and distance are inconsequential.

The true obstacles to vision, art, and progress are evil, intentional ignorance, and complacency. As always, they appear novel, appeal to the instincts, and ultimately impede elevation of the spirit.

There can be no compromise in the name of art. No compromise whatsoever.

Élan Vital

The art of sound, as I see it, contributes to sustaining the light of reason.

The aesthetic moment is one of clarity of consciousness evoked through experience of art, and yet it is outside the awareness of all but a very few. Though it may be refined, and overanalyzed to an absurd degree, it is merely a moment of vigorous insight into life itself and the act of living with awareness and grace.

It is available to all, sparked by perception and cognition, unfettered by politics, identity issues, cultural disputations, or the influence of the juggernaut of digital mass media on the collective zeitgeist.

It requires nothing more than recognition of the contemplative means by which such understanding is conveyed.

Pause, reflect.  Listen, and hear.

Stand Fast

When reason is forced to yield to emotion, doors close, gates are locked.

Art unstops the eyes and ears.  This cannot be real and be compromised.

Course

Any artistic gesture is the result of will and opportunity.

The art of sound is an expression of grace, clarity, and subtlety that cannot be forced or falsified.

Passages

Difficulties arise when appearance and reality do not correspond.

A false perception is created to conceal, while the purpose of true expression is to reveal.

Before there is understanding, there must be knowledge.

This is discernment, rightly dividing the real and the unreal.

Thus the composer, engaging awareness, unites the worlds within and those without.

Art as Contradiction

Curiosity is a driving force in the arts and sciences.

Complacency and apathy assure diminishing of consciousness; this is manifest in cultural decline. Measure what is known against what can never be known. Search, discover, experience, express.

Open the hidden gates.

Leaves Turn Upward

Atmospheres speak to the spirit.

Thus the elements the composer chooses from the palette of sounds.

Self, Nature, Sound

Observe the impress of nature upon the human world, as opposed to the common perspective.

Cultures move toward the natural world and away from natural reality according to the attitudes of the moment, but of all artistic expressions, the content of musical works is generally confined to the realm of the personal and social.

Whereas surrealism, pop art, and other emotionally charged forms like abstract expressionism have their musical counterparts in such styles as jazz fusion music, one must look to the classical tone poem and modern minimalism to get even a limited sense of the art of sound being used to convey objective perceptions of the world.  There are few analogous modes of a musical nature for concepts such as those of the "still life" form, landscape painting, or impressionism, because it is a matter of exhaustive theorizing and experimentation to come to terms with such concepts as an individual artist.

But, having settled these matters, the composer is exploring unique and fascinating sonic terrain while experiencing the unprecedented effects of sounds that are at once musical, non-musical, and engaged with human reality and the natural world in balanced measure.

Inevitability

In the moment now, the vast measure of common culture will vanish beyond memory.

This is the culture that serves the purposes of low-level communications, mass movements of groups, general, underdeveloped process of learning, propaganda, fad and fashion, and the perpetuation of a dim, materialistic grasp of the human condition. Its scenarios are untenable, its characters, grotesques.

It reflects populist social attitudes for the most part, and forms a constant, yet fortunately impermanent, aspect of contemporary life at any given point in history.

The artist must remain fixed upon the aesthetic and contemplative goals of expression, and be willing to work arduously, with elevated perspectives and long-term outcomes well-formed and executed, in order to avoid, and indeed, to act freely at a far distance from such banality. To do less is mere waste, while the artist who moves forward with vigor and rationality generates forces that bring the future into being, and does so as a catalyst of change unlike any other.

For This

What will be is present now, though witnessed and heard by very few.

The art of sound is, by nature, outside the interest of what might be generously called "the media-driven consumer".  This can not be an issue for any artist, since it has no bearing upon the creative mind and process.  The composer must experience, perceive, and act accordingly.  Nothing more.