Elektronische Existenz: A Music Philosophy

1. The Master should not offer a straightforward answer to

the learner because the answer must ultimately issue forth
from the learners inner flow of life itself, or what would be
for James the immediate stream of pure experience.

2. If we say that everything in the universe comes and goes,

seemingly unchanging mountains no doubt become and
perish, though their change is slow on the human timescale.

3. In Dogens view, objects are events, with their own course

of history, as active and transient as human experience..
Lifeless, barren mountains are ongoing life processes in
Dogens view.

4. Individuality outruns all classification, yet we

insist on classifying every one we meet under
some general head. (James)

5. Things are always changing, from one moment

to the next. But what point or purpose is there in
the fact it just happens anyway, unchanging?
None. It just is. The action of time is just
ceaseless constant meaningless change. You
can't escape from this. All you can do is wait for it
to end. And in the waiting you experience it over
and over again. But you can never grasp it for
there is nothing to grasp. As with a real stream,
the stream of experience just evades all attempts
to capture it. A timeline, then, is not a real
timeline. Its a fiction made from any number of
contingent snapshots forced to tell a story,
whatever the story is that you want to tell, a
succession of forced connections between
arbitrary points.

6. So we do not know who we are. We only know

the stories we have told about ourselves made
up of endless snapshots of experience.

7. There is always some lack, something missing.

We are always incomplete, imperfect. And even if
you now reply "but I have everything" I grin and
reply. But you don't have it forever. And so you
are missing eternity.

8. Life is terrifying and yet wondrous in the same

moment. And that is absurd. I make an absurd
music that is "out of harmony" and "devoid of
purpose". It is literally a waiting and a passing of
time. But ultimately it is useless and partakes in
the meaningless of existence. It comes from
nowhere and goes back to it. It is often random
and insensible or deliberately unheimlich. It is an
experience of the aesthetics of life.

9. The longer songs are endless cycles, all

slightly different and yet all the same. The same
pattern over and over again. This is life. The point
is to endure, to make it to the end. Not because
there is an end. There isn't. For the next cycle
then begins The point is to experience yourself
as a being-through-time. Compare Cage's 4:33.
At the end nothing is resolved. Everything is just
the same as at the start. But you have
experienced. And in that you have experienced
change and taken part in the flux and the
becoming.

10. Is there a Dr Existenz kind of song? Yes there

is because we all fall into habits. THis is why you
should not try to copy others. It is inauthentic. To
truly fulfil your musical purpose is to fully
presence yourself and add what is uniquely you
to the world of sound.

11. The music I make is not the music I want to

make. Its the music I can't help making. The
music I want to make is always out of my grasp.
And that is a reflection of life. For the life you live
is never the life you want to live. Its always the
life you can't help living. The life you want is
always out of your grasp.

12. The only meaningful choice in life is whether

to keep breathing or to stop - and to completely
own the choice.

13. The random, the chaos, the instinctual. A

distrust of the deliberate, the reasoned, the
"purposeful". The tomorrow that will never arrive
and, consequently, the finding meaning in the
circumstances of here and now. And yet the
attempt to presence meaning is ultimately not
enough. All you are given are marks that, in
themselves, mean nothing. This one reason there
are so few tunes. You are challenged to find "your
tune" within it or accept that there is nothing
there.

14. In the end, no matter how many works

populate my Bandcamp, no matter how good or
bad they are subjectively judged to be, they are
shouts from the void into the void. They
accomplished nothing.

15. We wait. We are bored. No, dont protest, we are bored

to death, theres no denying it. Good. A diversion comes
along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, lets
get to work! In an instant all will vanish and well be alone
once more, in the midst of nothingness. Vladimir, Waiting for
Godot.

16. the sin of having been born

17. musical fantasies, good and meaningful or bleak and

hellish, are two common types of musical work I create.

18. a system of differences without positive terms. self-

definition.