Although advocates, usually salaried employees of art organizations, will beg to differ, I declare here and now for all time that there is simply too much music in the world. At least, there is too much if the goal of the person laboring to make this music is to have a name, a personhood, an individuality created out their efforts. Stockhausen, in a talk to a Dutch arts organization about religion in music, maintained that this is natural impulse of a Western musician and that the Buddhist inclination to get rid of ego in not in keeping with the European mindset.

What may have been true to Stockhausen has been rendered incomprehensible by the fact of the internet, and the transient character of new musical careerism in our age. Try as one might to distinguish oneself as a unique voice, the sound will be subsumed into a crowded community of other experimenters, dabblers, free agents and DMAs looking for a day job. While my wish for those to find a way to make a bit of cash doing something they claim to love is sincere, I’ve come to believe that, for the majority, it’s truly Catch and Release. It’s the chase that one loves, the desire for expressing individuality, but musical End Times are here, and all that’s really left is overtonality, the resonant structure of the planet we live on the love we offer.