My interest in lack and nothingness has influenced my music composition for some time now. So I will talk about how that has led to a new, more silent practice.

Working with others and contending with explaining ideas, or the belief that a piece of music should have a reality, context, message, or idea; some fabric of cohesion that steers the music towards its finished product; an underlying theme or reason for being relating from the artist to the listener a view of a time, a lens. Working with others also risks derogation and feedback that considers the work lesser, less than good, less than listenable. Coupled with my mental illnesses and the disorder that followed these make a potent mix for creativity. Learning after years of listening to voices and perspectives trying to convince me that art is worthless, or my efforts hold no good contributions to the world, I have worked to regain a sense of self from which I am able to create music and art.

Some could call the nothingness, emptiness, but instead I see it as a wholeness. Not so that I prove myself to the hauntings of abuse, but so that a more authentic form resonates. I am able to sit and perform in a silence, adaptive music working with plant biofeedback, field recordings, and generative synthesis. In these places I am able to liberate myself from the burden of voices and perspectives that seek to dominate and recover myself so, while the genre of music may not be what I set out to create all those years ago in high school, it is something more in tune with myself and the world, a healthier place from which my mind is not listening to attachments, ideas, or grand gestures of beauty, but something more, a beauty in the indeterminate, seeing the face of the Other for their burdens, and the grief for lives tarnished by the survivalism that so affects all of us.

This music is not so much an event, but a collection of spaces, of feelings and situates me in my peaceful state. These sounds are composed in structure together. They exist as artifacts of availability, what was available, and document a moment in space and time. They recapture moments so the body can rest, and reaffirm for itself, life. In the composition practice this looks like sleepless nights giving the mind something to do so racing thoughts, hypnagogia, and intrusiveness are left elsewhere for spaces, a line of flight to hear the grasslands swaying in the gentle wind. In this space I can be free, but limited, although limited in such a way that I am rejuvenated. Learning to hold no thoughts and simply breathe, knowing which dials to turn which way or when to touch a plant, like a puzzle to put together and admire that such things can work in such ways.

It is much like walking a trail and admiring the countryside for its grasslands, forests, rivers, and lakes. The city becomes a hub far away where power knows its own bounds and out here I am free to roam. Even when the city must be returned to it starts to look more like a trail, busy with life and cadenced by light. Talking to an other who understands becomes a reservoir not easily forgotten or moved forward from, for it nourished a small part, in much the same way as this silent mind for music. The ability to create something for someone to connect with or share in feeling the burdens of life comes from this state of nothing, an acceptance that I am here. The music speaks for itself, all I have to do is give it the time and resonance.