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On The Arc of the Beautiful Decay

by West Riding

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1.
Do Not Let My Shadow Flow Into the World 06:31
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2.
Like Phantoms Haunting Leaves and Grass 06:23
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For The Time Being, All Is Time 08:01
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about

This album is centered around the historical event known in Japanese Zen as "Nehan," also known as the "paranirvana" of the historical Shakyamuni Buddha, in it's simplest terms, the death of the historical person known as Siddartha Gautama, later simply called the Tathagatha or the Buddha. Indeed, the release date of the album, February 15th, is on or near the date most Buddhists recognize this event.
However, it was actually a line in a song by Tears For Fears that inspired the album title, and inspired my investigation - intellectual and creative - into this theme: "they make no mention of the beauty of decay," from the song "Break It Down Again" from the album "Elemental."

The gradual decay of and eventual death of the Buddha's human body is a wonderful lesson in and of itself...all things that are born must pass away, and all things that pass away transform into - or are reborn - as something else. Everything we can perceive is conditional, nothing more than a collection of phenomena stuck together in a specific way that we identify one collection as "me" and another collection as "you" and another collection as "tree" or "cat" or "ocean" etc. etc. etc. Disassemble the aggregate one piece at a time, at what point does it cease to be "person" and starts to be "worm food" or "atoms of the earth?" As the Thai Forest monk Ajahn Amaro said, "if I take this object I call a chair, and start to take it apart, at what point is it no longer a chair and is instead just a heap of wood and metal? If I burn the wood, at what point is it a pile of firewood and at what point is it ash?" Does the chair still exist even if it's only in the memory of the person who built it, bought it, or used it? Does the chair still exist if it was sat upon whilst composing a piece of music or poetry, as a latent aspect of the creative work? Indeed - when the Buddha died, did he no longer exist? In his final teaching, as his physical body neared death and his disciples lamented, the Buddha himself gave his final teaching, which basically said "this was never about me, this was about what I leave behind in the world for you to pick up and carry with you. So stop crying!"

Likewise, my memory, my words and actions and even my DNA will live on in my children, love I gave and love I received live on in my wife and family and friends, I'll leave behind a body of creative output for others to appreciate for decades to come...even my physical body will disintegrate and become the atoms of the grasses and fruits of the trees, which may be consumed by another creature later, at which point the atoms of my body will be one with the atoms of that creature. Indeed, our lives already revolve around what others have left behind, and the atoms of our bodies are nothing more than the atoms of myriad other living organisms.

And so in that, decay is not something to be feared or to find disgusting, but rather, is in its own way a necessary - and beautiful - aspect of our universe.

Musically and technically speaking - these tracks mark a bit of a shift towards my more electronic and noise-based work, but here merged with the same cinematic "soundtrack without a movie" orchestral style I've been focused on for the last number of releases. The renewed use of electronics and noise in this sense meant to evoke the feeling of "decay," of the breaking down and breaking apart that all things will eventually undergo.

credits

released February 15, 2024

all tracks composed, arranged, performed and mixed by West Riding (James M Gregg) at Rioghal Studios
mastering by CloudBounce
cover art "Making Repairs" by Jessica Beer (insta: @on_my_walks)

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West Riding Portland, Oregon

West Riding (aka James M Gregg) produces ambient, neo-classical and cinematic music inspired by quiet mountains, intrepid journeys and Zen koans, as well as artists such as Olafur Arnalds, Phillip Glass, Max Richter, Arve Henriksen, Hans Zimmer, Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Gustav Mahler and many more westriding.net ... more

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