Chris Denton - the cost of love (Official Music Video)
This is the final track from my new album, it’s nothing special. I had actually submitted the album for distribution with a different song (which will lead an EP coming this spring) as the final track, and a few days after I sent it to my distributor I woke up and composed “the cost of love.” Even with nothing but the bare structure, I knew that it belonged on “it’s nothing special,” so I recalled the album and set to work on this. It delayed my album release by over a month once all was said and done, and I’m incredibly glad that i followed my gut and got it on there. I hope you love it as much as I do.
I've been experimenting with ambient music lately and creating interesting textures and sounds. All of the sounds in this piece were generated with digital synthesizers on my ipad and then manipulated in various ways with a variety of plugins. I made the animation in Adobe After Effects.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08iWstzboa8
Oftentimes when reflecting on my dissatisfaction with my life and circumstances as they are right now, I reassure myself with the reminder that it hasn't always been this way and won't always be this way either. That things will all be better and I'll be content once I get "there" or when it's "then" or when I have "that," and ideally that'll all happen simultaneously. Of course, by doing that I'm avoiding actually looking at my dissatisfaction to discover what I'm resisting and I'm actually investing the dissatisfaction and locking myself into it. The problem with not being able to find contentment unless I have that at some future then at some different there is that I am never "there", it will never be "then", and I can never obtain "that." All of those live in the purely theoretical future which inhabits the conceptual mind but forever remains ahead of us and is never in this moment of life. Wherever I am it is always "here," whenever I may be it is always "now," and whatever I may have it is always "this." Therefore, if I'm to find contentment in life it is necessary that I find it here, now, with this as I will never leave here or experience any moment but now and I only ever have this. This way of looking at things of course begs the question: "then what of suffering? What of pain or calamity? What of great loss or poverty? Am I to enjoy those states or passively tolerate them or just never be content?" My only answer is that life includes all of those hardships and more, and if those are what we have here and now then they are what we have- and it is precisely in those hardships that our contentment shines and can transform into a deep abiding joy expressed as compassion and love. It doesn't make it fun nor does it save us any discomfort, but it shows us what life is in the fullness of its beauty, which includes all the good and the bad together, and that to me make life worth living whatever life has brought me to live. The good news is that while we are always here right now and only ever have this, is that here is actually everywhere, now is the eternal moment, and this is everything, so we find that as we begin to contentedly live here, now, with this, we flow through all of life discovering unceasing love and beauty without end.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai7ZuvKoEFs
In the nearly five years since my marriage fell apart, I've very rarely shared anything about it in words although a sizable portion of the art that I've shared was part and parcel to my process of working through all of it. In the school of life, this has been the most important and vital course I have taken so far and the art (both visual and music) has been my teachers, my coursework, and my term papers. I'm not sure that there is such a thing as being "over it", and I have finally come to a place of true gratitude and self-forgiveness. If it were possible to go back while somehow holding on to what I've learned, there are many things that I would do differently and I'm sure that she would say the same thing. True as that may be, I only know how to time travel in the forward direction and can only do that in real time so at least for now a do-over seems out of reach. And upon reflection, I am grateful that there isn't a button to push which would make such a thing possible as i'm not sure that I would have either the strength or the courage which would be required to refrain from pushing it, because I know that even when it feels anything but perfect the universe is always in perfect order and seeing any of it as a mistake robs me of the joy present in all moments. Just over four years ago now as I began making visual art, I found that I had to remove my ability to "undo" the steps that I was taking as I created the pieces because instead of trusting that my heart knew how to express itself through the art and allowing the piece to arise I was second-guessing everything and in the process I was wrecking many pieces, and once I removed the ability to go back and change steps and instead trusted that my heart was speaking perfectly through the art even when i didn't see that perfection but continued forward with the piece, what resulted was much better work than I had ever done before. I rather suspect that all of life is the same and as I cannot know what would have happened if what did happen didn't happen and i have no way to reliably determine what is going to happen in the future, i actually have no basis for drawing any conclusions about where I should be other than where I am or what I should've done other than what I did and the only conclusion to draw is that life is always just as it should be which includes the feeling that it isn't. And if my conclusion is that it all happens perfectly than my response gets to be one of gratitude and a recognition that through all of it- the highs and the lows and in the most intimate moments of true love and the most devastating moments of complete heartbreak- I have learned how to truly love and to fully accept life and all within it in compassion and with joy even in pain and discomfort. Eighte
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_WStlqV1yc
A new melodic ambient piece along with a rather mesmerizing video of a colorful morphing mandala. Enjoy!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkDuSUfnXaM
There is nothing to do except to be, and the only thing to be is you! There is no how to be you, and once you accept that you will see that you know how to be you already!
From my upcoming album "it's nothing special" available on all streaming sites, for download, and on CD through amazon or my site on 2/13 but there is a pre-sale going on right now! the link is https://music.anauthenticpiece.com/album/its-nothing-special
https://anauthenticpiece.com
#anauthenticpiece, #taoteching, #chrisdenton
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtQ6yvYHaIU
I am really happy with this one, it is definitely my best animation work so far. It took nearly three days to render but seeing the finished result I feel that it was worth it. It's actually just a single image, and I just built various effect stacks on it using masks that I made from a picture of my eye. The music is rather trance-ish with the main melodic element being a vocoded and sped up reading of GK Chesterton's introduction to the 1905 edition of Aesop's Fables. And if you can't tell from those last two sentences, this one is weird (even by my standards). Enjoy!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1suIIQxiU5k
Sure, there are plenty of good reasons to be unhappy, and they are very real and perfectly valid. There's nothing wrong with being unhappy, and there is absolutely nothing inherently good about being happy instead of being unhappy. It's just that being unhappy isn't as fun as being happy, and I find life to be more enjoyable when I'm having fun (duh). I'm not suggesting that we should pretend to be happy or that we should ignore things which upset us- that only makes us even more unhappy. Nor am I one of these "positivity" people as that usually leads to being totally fake and making others wrong for their feelings. All I'm saying is that just as our unhappiness is completely real and valid as a response to life, so is our happiness. That just as we can always find very real reasons to be unhappy, we can also always find very real reasons to be happy (without making our reasons for unhappiness false), and if the reasons for happiness are just as true and valid as the reasons for unhappiness (which they always are) then I can choose either one without ignoring or denying the truth of the other as well. And regardless of circumstance or what hardships I may be going through, I will always do better by choosing to be fully real which means fully acknowledging the truth of the hard and unpleasant things in addition to all that is good because otherwise I'm just denying a huge chunk of life by pretending it's all one way or another when it's always all ways.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjVAoxUglgQ
This is the title track from my upcoming EP. Composed and produced entirely on my iPad Pro, every voice was created in the phenomenal Moog Model 15 synth (except drums, which were created in Ruismaker FM by Bram Bos). Xequence, AUM, Cubasis, and Grand Finale were used in composition, production, and mastering.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4s7fp2aIDg