Material to Abstract

Sensory awareness confined to a limited palette grows dim and weakens.

For the artist as composer and listener there must be expansion of both experience and imagination.

The temporal, the mediocre, and the mundane do not represent alternatives, but the end of culture.

Range II

The integrity of the artist cannot abide by the status quo.

Established limits do not exist to be exploited for personal gain, but to be challenged by visions beyond their scope.

Open, Close, Open

Emerge into the real.

Express the good; act with right reason.  Do this in defiance of culture, and at personal cost.

Understand and come to grips with what is then revealed.

As Forge Demands Fire

Much is made, in contemporary terms, of the concept of progress.

But progress implies improvement.

Show me this improvement.  Reveal it, that I may believe it.

Otherwise it is only a word to obscure the consolidation of power of the status quo.  This much is plainly evident, everywhere, at all times.  Look and see directly.  Listen, and hear.

Resistance III

Neither oppression nor repression of the arts ever reach an end.

Whether imposed by historical traditions or through contemporary cultural imperatives, subjection to collectivist thinking in academic and political circles will always plague artists no less than historians and all those who strive for true representations of reality. The purpose is simple: to eliminate utterly the power and value of the individual.

And the artist is nothing if not an autonomous free agent.  Nothing more than a lackey, a bootlicker.

Evidence of this is plain and clear.  It is not hidden from sight; one need only look at it directly.

There is no end to it.  Yet even if there is no winning, there can be no surrender, or all-- and this means all that is essential to cultural reality itself-- is lost.

Miasma

Expression has meaning when it is fundamentally sound and well-reasoned.

A culture and society that conflates "revolution" and "art" will have neither.

Aural Tints and Reflections

Find sounds of light, of passing distances, of turning winds.

This is the sonic dynamic, representing the ebb and flow of life.

Invisible

Mass media directs mass mentality in every form.

This direction implies that attention is driven towards certain things and away from others. It is as true regarding the arts, especially those related to music, as it is for politics, culture, and everything else.

Hence, independent thought, and the independent artist, are equally essential to life, and rarely seen.

Spells

Those familiar with the cyclic nature of reality understand impermanence, gain, and loss.

History lends itself to foresight, science to progress, and the arts, to enlightenment, even more so than the philosophical perspectives with their degrees of specificity.  It is the individual whose senses are opened through artistic expression, and the individual who must grapple with the implications of the artistic work.

Setting and Psyche

Contemplative space is itself an artistic accomplishment, whether created or discovered.

Noise renders even the most comfortable and visually beautiful place squalid, burdened by intellectual and spiritual neglect.  Everyone has endured this, and it is far too common.

Composer and listener share common bonds, and first among them are goals of elevated experience.

Integrity of Potential

The arts survive.

Decline is a fact of culture.  Ideas originate, prevail, and find their final forms. The arts never reach a state of finality.  To be continually filled and continually emptied out is the nature of expression.

Culture Paradox

Observe the "information society".  Find knowledge ubiquitous, literacy merely functional.

When this plethora of information leads to the assumption that the possession of an internal fund of knowledge is unnecessary, the error is one of profound consequence. Consider only the implications of failed, archaic, totalitarian ideas impressed upon art, politics, and the social order because their outward appearances give the uninformed the specious impression of "novelty". Yet this is of very little moment in comparison to the mass abdication of critical reason it presupposes.

Thus the essential nature of the contemplative, and of atmospheric sound art to enhance reflection.

Wax, Wane

Attainment of intellectual expression is a goal and focus of art.  It is noble, and desirable.

This is because of lasting impact, the shaping of future events, and what might be called the transmission of cultural progress through evolving ideas.

As a perspective this is easily lost upon society, and the momentum of reason difficult to gain.

Observe, Then Question

At no time in human history has music so absolutely saturated culture.

Thus it is taken for granted, devalued, viewed as a "given", without consideration for the labor of the trained musician or the intellectual rigor demanded of the composer, arranger, and songwriter, who are themselves considered marginal figures.

Progress of Being

Experience aesthetic meaning and perception is altered; life is changed.

Aesthetic meaning leads inevitably to a sense of awe.  Art, as representation of reality, evokes this.

All else called "art", regardless of form or scale, is mere cultural propaganda.  Nothing more.

Rhapsody

Overcome the boundaries of definition.

The alternative already exists: perpetuate the same thing in different forms and nothing more.

It is necessary to move beyond a synthesis of styles and influences and into imagination itself, there to order sound in new terms that may be refined, clarified, and expressed through replicable concepts.

The Artificial and the Reflective

To perceive the aural environment, listen without the presence of music.

The contrast with the musical environment, or with "environmental" music, is instantly apparent.

Sound imagery may be constructed in an aesthetic way without the stylistic elements that commonly define music, and in doing so the composer creates a more authentic reflection or representation of the "atmospheric" environment.  But make no mistake: such sound art is no more created randomly than actual environmental patterns are random in nature.  There must be cause and effect processes that the composer may influence and replicate in compositional terms; these techniques and methods are the unique intellectual property of any composer working in these peculiar experimental modes.

Perception is revelation.

Spaces, Tones, Movements

I am interested in aesthetic combinations of sound events.

The elements, theories, and techniques common to what is generally understood to be music, even in their most "primitive" forms, are far superior in their complexities and sophistication to the sound art I envision, design, and produce using entirely different concepts and methods.

These compositions are not about creating such things as songs, but rather perceptions, in the form of of settings, atmospheres, and contemplative states of mind enhanced by sounds.

At Liberty

These are... interesting times, as the Chinese curse puts it.

Art is not everything, and certainly it is not the only thing.

But one who does not recognize its potential, its power, and its capacity to accelerate or inhibit change both personal and cultural is, to be generous, rather foolish, and most likely, easily led.

Now and Everywhere

Ars longa, vita brevis.

Hippocrates continues the observation, finding "opportunity fleeting, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult".

So the arts demand action, and the delineation and representation of experience,  There is no time for considerations regarding gain and loss.  There is only the time that remains.