Fire, Impact

Culture changes, whereas human nature is predictable.

But cultural arts have the potential to alter ideas, attitudes, and perceptions, even to the extent of ennobling the individual.

Some artists consider these facts in terms of profound responsibilities; others give no consideration.

Museum Muse

A key to the expansion of experience is perceptivity.

Consider a reality without Warhol, Dali, Picasso, Frank Zappa, the Velvet Underground, John Cage, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer and others of merit and vision across the cultural spectrum.

And, in fine, this is reality.

Trial and Departure from Error

Observe culture at it most frenetic, overwrought, and predictable.

This is the end result of constant subjection to immediacy, or attachment to contrived "issues" and specious appearances everywhere glaring as distractions of the moment now.

Patience refines gesture. The reality of permanent things is in the abstract. Such things as love and honor cannot be placed in a brightly decorated container and sold at what price the market will bear.

It is a matter of prolonged critical thought and contemplation to gain insight into elevated experience and meaning.

Such experiences do not happen randomly or suddenly, and the arts that reflect them offer both challenges and satisfactions far beyond the temporal and mundane.

Extinction of Ideas

Without thought there is only the necessity to conform. And it is a necessity, a survival skill.

This need never be, as with thought comes foresight, yet when the human condition trends toward vanity, self-obsession, and complacency, it is an ever-present danger. Thus the connection between the ancient and modern Stoic, the Zen archer, and the 21st century avant-garde artist and composer.

All must strike the same target in darkness.

Above the Hollow

Human skill sets exist that are neither intellectual nor physical.

These non-cognitive, perceptual abilities involve persistence of engagement, acquisition of aesthetic perspectives, and experiential recognition of objective reality in contrast to cultural narratives or "mere appearances".  They are also essential to what is commonly recognized as an individual's work ethic, whether in scholarly, artistic, athletic or business pursuits.

Development of such capacities enhances awareness and perception, and expands consciousness as well, but interest in these things is rare in any age or cultural setting.

Foresight and the Unforeseen

Culture is predictable to the extent that prevailing attitudes tend to conformity.

This is the tyranny of mass mentality that demands of the artist subservience to a single perspective and its every element and aspect.

But the artist brings wind, light, and thunder, filling mere chaos with the unexpected stillness of satori and epiphany.

Overwrite Antiquity

Forgotten events are in motion.

The composer will do well to capture their forces, origins, tones and dynamic movements.

Their essential natures may be lost to contemporary understanding, but not to the modern listener, who feels their impulses in the unformed sounds of imagination.

Media Fog

Artists of integrity are never less than honest brokers of cultural information.

Artistic communication is often shadow-play, nevertheless, yet artists direct the attention to the places where they dwell, either toward light or darkness.

This understanding is the responsibility of the audience-- but it is not always present.

What is Called

Methodologies of music represent ways of controlling sound.

Yet there are other forms, other models. Every environment is a listening environment, whether music-- or control-- is present or not.

Echoes Fade, Anticipation Forms

Listen toward the silence.

The artist as composer expects time past, remembers time future, and expresses in time present.

Force of Memory

Note the collective mentality of cultural groups who demand their biases be reinforced by art.

Control of media and the public debate leads only to more control, and consolidation of power in the hands of fewer, more totalitarian, agents of the status quo.  Imagine scenarios in which "art" must be approved by the state or (other controlling forces) because specific ideas and content are acceptable, and no others.  But it is not necessary to imagine, and one need only observe these forces at work.

Time, Place, Identity Unknown

Crucibulum Media, a private label, releases recordings for the inner ear.

ORDER NOW

Introducing the Eighth Black Mountain School Album, titled Identity.

This fine recording is now available as a Producer's Edition Compact Disc, manufactured by the Kunaki corporation to exacting studio specifications, resulting in unmatched sonic fidelity.

The listener will hear these albums in the form intended by the artists, who maintain complete creative control over every project.  Each of these albums is an artisan work, created with full attention to every artistic and production detail, made for the forward-thinking listener.

Alt / Experiment II

Not music, but a panorama of sounds, dynamic in movement and tonal qualities.

As sounds evolve in a state of dreaming, without planning and interference, so they may be understood and brought into reality through perceptivity and imagination,

These are expressions beyond the composer's ego.  Rather, they are expressions of phenomena.

Simulacrum, or State Otherwise

Popular innovations are few.

For commercial purposes, and particularly in terms of musical forms, the rule is imitation, and thus works and performances are relegated to genre.  In the arts, this is indefensible.

There is no breathing room in such narrow confines. Survival is one thing, and commercial viability is another. But to create, really innovate on an individualistic, heightened level of awareness, one must break away altogether, even if no form exists in which to function.

Such forms, which are as yet unimagined, must be made real.

Wild Cry, Left at Great Distance

It is misleading to suggest culture is in a state of decline.

Popular culture is perpetually in a state of decline, based, as it is, upon the notion of "living only for the moment".  Forward-thinking is anathema in such conditions, which are always characterized by absurd emotionalism, squandered passion, insipid vainglory, and the stale idea that some ill-defined, nebulous "we" are "all in this together".

I am interested in art produced by individuals, for individuals.  In composition, it is always my goal to expand, not limit, and elevate consciousness.

This, at all times, defines my perspective on the modern world.

Order of Progress

The way of the artist is that of the individualistic gesture.

Of course this is existential rebellion, in opposition to the common, the mundane, and the self- righteously complacent everywhere manifest in contemporary culture at all times.

Who will think, rather than be told, will reach beyond the surface of appearances.  For the artist as composer, this is the critical choice between music that now exists and sounds that must instead be brought into being.

Intent and Obscurity

One does not simply demand an audience.  That is absurd.

For the artist as composer, the listener and audience are interested in the works, and certainly not in the bleating of the self-styled public artiste, for whom the world is a stage and pretensions to a sort of special genius are the order of every day.

One would think there is little time for such nonsense, yet, in fact, the stage is always set for the hosts of competing entertainers to enter what can be generously called a contest for popularity. Here, all the financial rewards and associated glamour of "show-business" and the like take special precedence.

But this is not art, of course, and those who see art as a higher calling can only regard such attitudes with disdain and contempt.  And these are the people for whom the artist is compelled to work, that is to say, like-minded individuals.  Thus the artist understands this audience will be reached in ways that are unrelated to clamor, fanfare, and extravagance, and that further, in cultural terms, this audience is the largest, most diverse, and most supportive of all.

Clairaudience and Reason II

The truly simple is often difficult to grasp.

Similarly, complexity will not mislead perception if fundamentals are understood.

Forge and Will

The artist may be moved by an inner voice, or directed by others.

Therefore, events may determine outcomes, and outcomes may, indeed, determine events.

Reasoning Music

The aesthetic environment is by nature a "thinking" environment.

Responses to the vicissitudes of life according to the art of reason are simply superior to frenetic, emotional reactions to the ways of the world.  The art of sound is not simply meant to fill a void.

As composer, I bring sounds together as representations of the physical, aural nature of the world with the purpose of revealing both the dynamics of atmospheres and those of the imagination.