Classic Ambience + Thoughts on Extended Beauty
Start or end the day with this ... you can't go wrong.
It’s not always a guarantee, but when we’re able to bring a better world into our lives, if even for a little while … somehow the day finds a way to shift … whether those moments greet our day, or support us in bringing it to a peaceful close.
So if you’re open to that, and unfamiliar with the ambient classic I’ve selected for you … you’re in for a treat.
This Week’s Ambient Gem
First Light is the opening segment from the Harold Budd/Brian Eno classic: “Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror.”
This first movement sets the stage for the rest of this classic extended work … one that so convincingly introduces the notion of suspended beauty, and which pulls us gently into a dreamworld that I’ve found welcomes me at the end of the day, at its beginning, or anywhere in-between.
I hope it brings a lovely first light into your life this week, and beyond.
Enjoy!
A Quiet Note
Now that I’ve thrown this concept of extended beauty out there, it’s probably a good idea to frame exactly what that could mean … and as you listen to First Light, here’s a few thoughts to roll around, and see where it begins to define your own definition.
Extended Beauty isn’t the flash that startles the eye … but to me, it’s rather the kind that keeps showing up after the first impression fades.
It’s the beauty you only notice when you linger—like the way morning light doesn’t just arrive, it lengthens.
Extended beauty asks for time, presence, and a willingness to return. It’s less fireworks, more hearth fire.
It’s less about surfaces and more about relations. A tree is lovely, but an entire woodland restored over decades is extended beauty.
And yes … a kind word is lovely, but a habit of gentleness is extended beauty.
In music, a striking melody is lovely, but the care with which its consideration and treatment of space, dynamics, and breath—so that it carries the listener through five or fifty minutes—that’s extended beauty.
These are all examples of beauty that endures, because it’s braided with attention, restraint, and renewal.
In our spiritual life, extended beauty becomes the practice of perceiving—training the eye, ear, and heart to keep noticing.
And the longer we look, the more the ordinary reveals its depth: a face lined by years, the quiet dignity of a daily ritual, the silence between. In interspiritual language, this is devotion without spectacle: attention as prayer, continuity as offering.
It suggests that we prefer the sustainable over the urgent. That we choose fewer, truer commitments, and let them deepen.
That we measure success by lasting resonance of a thought, an act, a moment by any other name: relationships that hold, work that still serves, compassion that brings both calm and knowing. It’s choosing to become more deeply present to the life that surrounds us.
Peace.
James Anthony
PS -
For anyone interested in how the elements of music combine to make a glorious whole, I’m a course on Parametric Music Composition.
It’s a gentle, theory-light, and tool-agnostic way to approach composing music.
We’ll discover ways to look at the fundamental elements of music, both one at a time, and then in increasing combination.
Elements including, but not limited to: pitch, rhythm, dynamics, articulation, timbre, and texture.
I’d like to gather some more information bout your course preferences, so that it better meets your needs.
If you’d fill out this brief survey, that would help immensely (time to complete <5 min)!
In the future, for more information, and regular course updates … please visit the “Making” tab on my Substack page: