Slightly Uncomfortable
Adjusting to the madness of our times
A Program Suite of Electronic Art-Music
PART ONE (Hidden Grace - Dusk of Time) (Disc 1) 69.86
I Angel’s Beg
1 Ran My Best (Ballad of Innocence) 8:00
2 Light Works (Revelation of War) 8: 45
3 Heavenly Rap (Descent of the Arts) 11:30
4 Eleven Towers (Opening the 9/11 Wounds) 9:23
5 Peeking Behind Masks (Politics of Security) 12:11
II Angel’s Circus
6 Dancing the Crowd (Mass Media) 8:14
7 Slightly Uncomfortable (Traffic) 4:31
8 Magic Tricks (Daily Grind) 5:05
9 Recess (Weekender) 3:27
PART TWO (Grace Revealed – Dawn of Eternity) (Disc 2) 47.02
III Angel’s Shadow
1 They are near here (Shamanic Invocation) 7:47
2 Progress (Masters) 6:26
3 Rookies (Disciples) 3:31
4 Flying Turtles (Art, Meta-Science and Technology) 4:11
5 Eastward (Uniting with East) 5:46
6 Westward (Forgiving the West) 2:45
7 Hunting Diana (Re-venerating Natural Earth) 2:50
8 Trans-former Children (Indigo Generation) 2:47
9 Passage (End of History) 0:52
10 Into the Clearing (Approaching the Peace of God) 12:47
Slightly Uncomfortable
Program Notes
Slightly Uncomfortable is a through-composed program suite of electronic art music. The program suggests a two-part structure. Part One entitled “Hidden Grace” expresses a call to grace, a disillusionment with the current state of our world and also contains a less obvious undercurrent of hope. Part Two entitled “Grace Revealed” is a revelation and a prayer answered pointing to the dawn of a new age. Part One begins the work with a teenager’s love song in the form of a prayer. The second part beckons the Spirit to enter our world, and so arrive our helping Angels. The piece concludes with a vision of the Man of the New Age of Peace entering a clearing having passed through a cathartic transformation.
Slightly Uncomfortable can describe our state of mind at the dawn of the 21st Century. Slightly uncomfortable is how we often feel watching the news, listening to our politicians, and thinking about our future. Slightly, describes our lack of concern towards a world not at ease. Slightly, is however not enough to make us run to the streets, not enough to dare to object too loudly. And uncomfortable, well, how else can one politely express how we feel sitting in traffic, going to war, or watching the news. Our state of civility requires us to tolerate, understand, and maybe even numb out. In any case, we often find ourselves slightly uncomfortable.
On the slightly darker side, slightly uncomfortable is how we all feel listening to the atrocities in Bosnia on NPR, how we feel listening to the news about murders and rampant poverty, how we feel about our implicit consent to “necessary” wars. Slightly uncomfortable is what we feel when we accept our bonus checks upon hearing of layoffs, when we find ourselves watching the accident on the other side of the beltway hurriedly on our way to work, when we find ourselves cornered with the many choices we are conditioned to make day after day.
On the slightly brighter side, slightly uncomfortable also describes our state of mind when we are pushed beyond our false comfort zones. People feel slightly uncomfortable at the sight of a handicapped child, a street person, or someone talking about having found God. Slightly uncomfortable seeing two unlikely people kissing in the street, slightly uncomfortable hearing people share about miracles in their lives. In any case, slight degrees of tremor are required to upset our state of false equilibrium and anesthesia to reality, again we feel slightly uncomfortable.
Like a curtain that covers a stage before a show, our life feels like the inevitability of something to follow, a movement from the instability of discomfort to the inevitability of a resolution. Regardless of the depth of the fall, sanity dictates that there ought to be an ascent. Slightly uncomfortable - we are invited to examine, witness, and experience our discomfort and perhaps discover a door to a different place. A place that is no other than where we are, but perhaps see it truly for the first time.