My Coming Out party

I've been hiding my talents from the world more or less, mostly more, even though you can google my name, Richard Royce artist and see a list of my art images created over the years and other odds and ends of my careers in fine arts and music.

I'm an old geezer and in the end game of my life. I have accumulated a few gems of wisdom along the way and I feel a responsibility to share whatever might be useful to the generations of young sprouts that follow me so that they may make a quantum leap in their conscious development. When I was a young man, I learned that it was a good thing to leave an area better than when I arrived. I am going to attempt to do this on this blog by posting my artwork and my thoughts. I have written a number of articles that sit on a remote hard drive in my computer and I plan to dust off the digital cobwebs. I have been promising to myself to get them published in book form but again, it ain't happened. So if you want to have some fun and at the same time increase your sphere of consciousness ( I hope), hang out here once in a while and take in the kernels. The first thing I want to post is my theory of music. I have been playing guitar for 60 years. In these last bunch of years, I have been developing a style that is best explained in the piece I wrote for my CDbaby.com digital CD that I will reproduce here. The original is at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/richardroyce

NEW MUSIC
"Basically music is made of sounds and silences. All the rest is opinion and cultural agreements based on some observation but is a package of beliefs that define that kind of music. Western music as a category has several of these rules that define it. The distance in the the size of a wavelength that determiness the 7 notes in the scale and the regularity and time between notes. 4/4 (4 quarter note beats per measure, the line between groups of notes on a music page), 3/4, 5/8 etc. The structure of keys 1 4 5 (the first note of the chord starting with that note in a scale plus the fourth note in that scale being the first note in the second chord and the fifth note in that scale being the first note in the last chord of that key). What's allowed in a chord, typically 1 3 5 (ie. making a C chord take C as the first note, E the second note of the C chord being the third note if C is one; CDE, and G is the 5th note from C completing the C chord. Chinese music has a whole different rule set. Where Western allows x number of steps between tone A and tone B, Chinese has many x. Indian music has its set of rules. African and so-called primitive music, Tai, Greek, Jazz, Folk, Atonal, Blues etc. All these different rule sets have some sets of things in common. Other groupings have other things in common. The only common denominator of all of them is that there are distinct lengths of waves "notes" and there are organized and disorganized patterns of silences between the "notes". There are regularities that vary from fixed rigid to loose almost chaotic. We know that art is the quality of communication. Quality derives from Who. So the quality part is a "who" is communicating. The closer that ineffable sensation, feeling, emotion, attitude of the cause point is realized by the manipulation of the sound and silence and resonates in the heart of the cause, the better the opportunity for receipt point to duplicate that one thing totally unique to the cause, his viewpoint or his experience moment or point. Add my definition of art as "the telescopic kaleidoscope of meaning" and you have in my opinion the only reason we communicate with each other. It's real to me that each of us is trying to understand the whole, the meaning of life, why we are here, who am I, God? Each of us has a unique point of view. I cannot see the world from where you see it, which includes the way you see it through the lens of your experience and infinite ways you consider it. I get closer to the truth by experiencing your point of view. The truth is that there is an infinity of wavelengths between each of the notes in the western musical scale. There is an infinity of spacial (time) sizes between these notes. As my point of view in the hologram of reality has an infinite number of possible coordinates, the beliefs, opinions and rules of musical categories only approximate my exact coordinate point of truth. When I look at nature I see perfection. Perhaps the human bias for this vision and opinion has to do with the fact that we grew up in this perfection and are in fact made of this perfection. We are fractals of a higher organization of fractals in both the larger and smaller directions. The quark and the galaxy put side by side with size adjustment are interchangeable. There is an infinite variety of possible organizations of these same building blocks. When the artist relaxes into alignment with his inner truth, feeling, rightness, visceral, not judgment or evaluation, he is lining up his spirit particles with the God pattern. In a similar way that iron filings fall into a mysterious pattern when a magnet is near, those infinitesimal adjustments are made by the artist without effort. Nature shows ineffable beauty juxtaposed with rot, stinky stuff, beauty, love, death, broken fingernails. It's all part of the pattern. I was listening to something I had composed and hadn't put in the “done” file yet, still working on it. There was a sound I would normally delete, but I asked myself what does that sound make me feel? It took me into a turn that expanded my experience and understanding. I realized that I had a belief operating that that sound was not "OK". It was a cultural belief. The sound spoke to me. I left it in. Then I realized that every sound I made was made at that instant of surrender to the pattern. On listening, it took me to a coordinate location that was AUTHENTIC to my state of being at the instant of creation. So I am postulating that slows, speedups, notes that I might have called sour or sound effects not made by the strings were all valid expressions and once I handled my own prejudice, opinion and belief about it I could experience a greater range of experience listening to it as it was authentic, true and honest as to my experience. If I have any value to my fellows it is to be authentic and communicate my exact coordinates. We know that a symbol is a movable idea. If the artist manipulates substance and organizes it to his pattern, it can sit in that dormant state until another person person senses this pattern. Since we are all of the same patternss, the receiver should be able to experience something caused by the arrangement in the symbol's pattern. An important thing when listening is to ask oneself specifically when one has encountered something that seems odd, "How does this oddity make me feel?" and "Do I have a belief regarding this issue?" For example, slows and speedups of meter or cadence. I had to do this to break my prejudices about “Oh, that note isn't pure or there is a buzz in the sound”. On an unconscious level, I causatively entered those "aberrations". When I asked those questions, I found I had a Western bias and that the "off" sound tickled me or made me get a sensation of burnt edges of leaves in early fall. Something,, not pure vanilla; what I was used to; something new; something real; something me! I'm not a Stepford wife. I fart. I notice and take joy in the "edgy". If there is anything I can say about myself it is that I am consciously trying to be authentic. Who am I? The only remaining doubt is the ego's worry about one's product or communication being of value. That's just an ego thing that has always gotten in the way of artists until they slipped out of it into their infinity space. That whole issue is moot as the filter through which God sees, works, plays is crystal clean in the true artist of all kinds. You can't understand art unless you delve into the spiritual realms. Each of us is an ego; electronic construct by God to fool him/her/itself into not knowing it's him/her/it being talked to by him/her/itself. Hard to play chess with yourself. You need to build a machine that is so complex that it hides your own thoughts from yourself so you can have a game. That is the "in the beginning is and always is, cause". "He" throws out a particle to view (of himself). What's missing is the evolution necessary for him to disconnect from himself consciously and thus have an other. Being Being Cause is being self-determined, thus we are cause and being self-determined. The only thing that happened was the construction of so many mirrors and time lags that God has the illusion of talking to another and not just himself. SO with that as a basic understanding here, I am going along merrily interchanging all over the place. Sometimes with confusion, sometimes with relative clarity. Sometimes I pick up an idea that isn't mine and hasn't been tested. Sometimes I get into such a scuffle that a bit of me gets trapped with some confusion and literal content that masquerades as my inner truth. If I am a lens or reflection of God, then what comes through is a function of the clarity of the lens or mirror surface. What I understand about the creative act is that I relax into my inner truth or my gut feeling or my joy, or my certainty that I am the God of my universe and what I say goes. There are no worthy comparisons to measure up to because I AM CAUSE. I CALL THE SHOTS. I AM BIRTHING SOMETHING NEW, NEVER BEFORE SEEN, therefore, I can trust my inner voice, urge, the the certainty that my self-determined stroke of the brush or line or note is perfect. It is the one area where I am 100% unadulterated God. It's as if that portion of me as a lens of God has been cleaned with Windex. God comes through in his perfection. Taking this idea further and Bashar's (look him up on Youtube) encouragement to live in the present and follow your joy, any time one relaxes into their heart truth, they are doing what God would do in that situation. They are Arting. They are Godding. When one is creating something new, it is not what people are used to. They don't bring the wealth of understanding to the viewing that the artist created it with. The unfortunate situation that usually happens outside of the speculators that exploit this phenomena, as we saw in the last century with all the different new art fads, is the artist is ahead of his time, literally meaning his new understanding isn't common knowledge and it may take a while for the society to catch up. Been there, done that! So down to the nitty gritty with my "New Music", no one might understand it, bringing their prejudices to it. Maybe with a blog discussion and gathering a following of those willing to abandon preconceived ideas, prejudices, opinions, beliefs, those lucky few might discover what viewpoint of the universe emanates from this point!"