The Mountain Told Me to Live began as a project of chance, organic forms of music based in repetition. As the composing process unfolded, phrases and words were brought together to become cyclical themes as layers were applied with mental health processes. These cycles of recovery became all the more apparent in August 2024 when I hiked a 4,000-foot mountain. I was not alone. We may have driven the first 1,000. At the time, I was in school studying philosophy and music. I was taking a class in 20th-century Continental Philosophy. I was in the midst of reading German Existentialist Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. I had to grasp the perspective of inauthenticity as a form of anxious attunement centered in care. This did not make sense to me. How would Being as it is most of the time be guided by fear? How does this knowledge create a life of value when authenticity seems mostly unachievable? What authenticity can be achieved through fear? These were some of the questions on my mind during the hike.
As we began, I spent more time thinking about anxious attunement than I did being present in the beautiful environment. The idea that this dense and influential text of philosophy was arguing that I should live most of my life in fear angered me and overwhelmed me. I had not finished reading the book for the first time however. More on that later. Here, I was unafraid and doing as well if not better than I had ever done. I wanted to look to Levinasian responsibility as an answer to what to do with fear, but Heidegger seemed to say that anxious attunement is not much of a choice. He applied it as a natural state from which we strive to achieve authenticity toward the life that is left, not the life aspired to if there is one afterward. Here we have one of the central themes of the work and the journey–acceptance. Acceptance of imperfection and uncertainty. I had accepted the danger of hiking the mountain, but I had not dealt yet with the uncertainty of making it to the ridge and the stress would require rest as we journeyed upward.
About an hour in, having circled my way through every angle I could think of, I decided to focus on the present moment, commune with nature, and use the hike as a meditation. The peace was moving. As I stressed and continued upward I spent most of my time looking at the ground and controlling my breath while keeping up with my brother in law. As we would rest, we would sit and look out over the mountainside. These moments to catch my breath and see back down to where we came from encouraged me. The adrenaline countered the fear of understanding, and I glimpsed that understanding would come later, I just had to persevere to get there, enjoy the hike, and keep reading and studying when I returned. Eventually, we arrived at the ridge. Snow had settled in drifts and lupines bloomed, as well as the tundra flowers covering the ground. We walked and ran around for a while then as we were about to head back down there was a memorial with a quote from the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson that read “It is not the length of life but depth of life.” Ha! Having given up on thinking about philosophy, philosophy found me at the top. So what did this mean?
As we ventured downwards at an easy pace with the amazement one finds on such a climb I thought to myself that putting Emerson’s quote in the context of what I knew at the time of anxious attunement created an answer that conveyed another central theme to the work–as we move from struggle, to peace, to value, each of these is present even in silence. The struggle upwards, the easy descent, and the high are graphed together with the depth of a rich and valuable experience that can be relied on in the future to overcome the next descent, but the descent and life in a downward direction must be lived, or else life would have no depth. By no means does this mean that the feelings of uncertainty and loneliness created inquisitively, by life, or mental illness, require fear. Fear as a natural response and as terror may leave scars, but they do not define the authentic self. These anxieties act as markers and distinguish events, feelings, and memories. Authenticity places the individual toward the returning struggle from a better vantage point to overcome and live deeply gaining new insight. The authentic act then guides recovery to a space outside the cycle, creating a new perspective for the next time a cycle arrives.
If we see phases of tension as tragic, then tragedy becomes a network of relationships that provide value beyond the original experience. They inspire, but they also trap us in suffering. Suffering fuels the bad habits that trap us even further. As we are trapped, it may take another to free us. Yet, this liberation is not done violently. It is created by clarity. A violent liberation only replaces one trapping with another. A liberation in search of clear authenticity is done together and not alone. It takes introspection on all sides and an exchange of perspectives. A perspective that may define tragedy as when there is no recovery. Although this irrecoverable tragedy exists, it presents a different path. A path that may remind us of the value in struggle and embolden someone to support and give strength to arrive at a place of acceptance of imperfection and uncertainty, and rest on the mountainside. Such peace found in the tragic creates bonds with a network, placing meaning in the grasp of apathy and desire.
What I would later learn from reading Being and Time was the clarity of fact gained in authenticity. To recognize such cycles for what they are and navigate through them with a task to learn from them creates a boundary that helps the self pen a map, a territory of the land encompassing the perceived experience. From this, we learn our way around and suffering becomes an area that can be seen and felt, but it can be moved through when escape seems futile. Thus, the history and present moment provide paths and warnings. Although history has its doubts, its prejudices, and its undoings, it informs and, when placed together in various contexts, allows a transcendental journey to improvement. These cycles project a nonlinear movement, increasing the value found within moments of connection, peace, understanding, pain, suffering, loss, birth, imperfection, and moving forward with time. I will leave this list at least at love. The loneliness felt at the possibility of failure is counteracted by having tried, having done some small act toward a recovery of authenticity. Suffering may seem an insomniac moment in the dark, but bound in place by proximity, there can be found comfort in the restful moments of accepting a slow, deep breath. The choice to remember and recollect some small sense of positivity, whether a phrase, a loved one, or even an ideal, can rehydrate us to walk through and upward to the ridgeline.
The horizon is a prevalent theme in Heidegger’s work, and it applies here as well. The horizon or what is within our view, what we are able to maintain our focus upon, and what lies within our grasp remain and go forth toward expanding and contracting our boundaries. When I hiked the mountain, I restricted my focus to completing the task at hand and ignored all bothersome distractions to find, in the end, an expanded boundary that informed me of what I had left outside, to the sounds and silences of nature. As horizons move and we place them where they create prevalence or that we accept what is made upon us, we trace back to the map, a conciliatory drawing of responsibility away from clutter toward a refreshment of the image like a waterfall appearing on a dehydrated journey. Each horizon changes as the identity in the moment changes its focus. The painting holds its many interpretations to convey the simple image. The music, a source of sound, silence, noise, and the resolving of tension, provides a flux in feeling akin to the stresses of mental illness. One chord inharmonic to a resolve in some distant harmony led to another out of key reprieve to enhance the final chord, whether it seems dissonant or sounds consonant. The horizon provides the tools to create a sight on a path trodden by others, no matter how small, to a grove by a lake, serene and still.
Through a combination of chance operations and my experience hiking the mountain, I arrived at this collection of six pieces. It began with the Orchid Loop 1, which utilized biofeedback from an orchid to generate harmonies and rhythms. Lyrically, this represented the bottom of the mountain, the left panel of the triptych. The next two songs moved me upward to accomplishment and acceptance. Although, because of my method, they were written out of order. Following this are two instrumental pieces that brought the wonder of childhood exploration through the woods and the rejuvenating environment it provided. Finally, Folding In tied these cycles in a more compact summary and a different perspective that began with the Socratic claim “All I know is that I know nothing” because at various points in the mental health experience, it can seem this way. The process was complicated at times because of my mental health. Recording through it and reflecting on these experiences created an environment in which I could rest and focus on listening to my imperfections.
Listening to my imperfections brought a fear of not being enough. A fear of being able to give to this world something of value, antithetical to my perceived value as mentally ill. What I was able to acquire was an acceptance that these imperfections contribute more to my tasks than maybe the mundane motor skills. They apply the value to each relationship in my life and create a bond between me and the activities that fill each day and night. I become in being a different way to be than the cracks and the accomplishments. I, in being, create and instill a value as ambiguous as it may be, in an authenticity that lives through fear. My fear becomes a valuable response, one that maintains depth in life rather than consuming it. In the times of abject terror, or instead what becomes a hallucination, does not become a delusion, but settles into the background further out on the horizon. I did not have to achieve the highest heights. I could accomplish in composing the album an acceptance of myself and the parts of the world that affirm notable value.
The mountain told me to live, to be present, to accept, and to be authentic. To regain the qualities of focus that troubled minds and bodies fluctuate between. It is an imperfect solution to a cyclical problem, but it has the capacity to grow and adapt. Whether hiking, creating music, or dealing with the mundane discrepancies that unfix our feet during the day, an affirmation of the complete picture can provide some peace. This burdensome task carries valuable moments. The displacement of fear by orientation widens perspective. My goal in creating this album was to represent these various states. That does include room for new interpretation. Please enjoy the other artists’ work as much, if not more so, than mine because the depths discovered in one’s personal practice illustrate our vast experiences.