On Motif & Impression

Motif is also including ‘motive‘ – which is essentially a smaller part than motif, a building block to an idea, a point of inflection or challenge, etc.

This wil bridge the idea of Motif/Motive with that of impression, and to do that I will jump right in.

Oftentimes, the artist must make quick, opportunisitic decisions on their pathmaking. Parts/ideas/impressions must be disregarded. – “Parts”, the close reader will notice, means the smallest molecule in an idea, a phrase, an instrument, etc.

Within the vast possibilities of creating a piece, the idea must come about on what is to be the most focused on. An idea has an orbit of inflection. The idea of inflection will be considered in another page. In that focus, the artist must be willing to disregard certain elements, impressions, aspects of a motive or part. Not all things can always be elaborated on or explained. That void will have to serve in the backdrop. This is the imperfection of creation, in a way.

Therefore, to create an impression with enough intention, a motive must be necessarily repeated or altered, varied, until it has been inflected and exhausted. Intervals, shapes, proportions must sometimes be disregarded as happenstantial. Otherwise, there are too many points to explain between connecting ideas, or there is no room for variation.

The idea is both what is altered and how or the space in which that is altered. MANY connections come about in this process. You, as the artist, must choose what is the most important for the idea of the piece and its impression, and do so with grace and opportunistically, otherwise no work will ever be manifest.

On impression
Impression is essentially created by an invocation of something that has been perceived. (It is a little more difficult for me to explain hwo this works on a still image, so I will come back to that in my later revisions.) I will use music, or motion picture as an example. Impression branches into expectation and attention, but I will try to remain outside of those realms here.

If we were to use tonality as an example: Repeated intervals or harmonic movements that suggest – suggestion being key to impression, mind you – a certain tonality, that would give the ear the perception of being in that tonality. Of all the possibilities, it needs to lock into whatever is closest, and it will, with some exception when there are battling or unclear movements. Say another tonality suddenly takes hold, or contains that old tonal impression. Not only is the impression new, but perhaps the old one is seen in another light. The listener will have little judgement of a piece until its motive and has played out – they do not know where to place the impressions. (This is where the mediocrity never expands.)

The impressions are fleeting, momentary, and so they must dominate to hold dominion. They must prove tyrannical. Otherwise, other impressions will take their throne. For the student, this is straightforward, but for the more advanced, that challenge is exactly what brings about a piece’s idea, and an impression’s victory, downfall, or another idea.

Take a motion picture. It works the same way. We have an impression of a character, a scene, an event, a mood. It cannot be clouded by too many possible interpretations or overemcumbered simultaeneous ideas. A motif, idea, meaning, must be repeated, and eventually that impression changes, is challeneged, or inflected in another light, and we have an arch.

Impressions press onto other parts. A neutral face, but an emotional sound, song, contextual scene, and the feeling is implied and projected by teh viewer onto the face, and it is perceived one way or the other. The theory of color harmony works like this. A color appears entirely different when in the context of different colors. The eye vibrates in sympathy, so does the mind and emotional body in its perceptions.

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Consider this page unfinished. I will add images and elaborations. Mind not the spelling or grammar errors. Where’s my editor??