Bear the Astronot's music creates narratives; however, these narratives rarely proceed linearly. A song can feature a voice without identifying who owns it. Images can reappear in multiple projects with new interpretations. A landscape can exist as both a physical space and an internal state. Moments that appear autobiographical can evolve into something imagined, symbolic, or intentionally ambiguous. Bear the Astronot does not create narratives for listeners to find answers to all their questions. Rather, his narratives provide opportunities for exploration.
Songwriting Can Provide Insight Without Providing Closure
Traditional narratives often establish a beginning, provide context regarding events, and conclude.
However, this model is not always applicable to songwriting. A song can provide a snapshot of a single moment within a broader narrative. Songwriting can maintain uncertainty rather than resolve it. The narrator may only comprehend a portion of what is occurring, and therefore, the listener may experience similar uncertainty. Unanswered questions are not necessarily missing elements of information for Bear the Astronot. Instead, sometimes these unanswered questions represent an element of emotional honesty. Memory is incomplete. The identity of an individual varies based on who is speaking. Hope, grief, regret, and belonging are seldom defined clearly. Retaining some degree of complexity enables a song to be perceived as more authentic.
Listeners Become Involved in the Narrative
When a song provides complete clarity, listeners primarily receive information. When a song provides space for interpretation, listeners become active participants. A phrase can resonate with a listener's personal memory which the songwriter was unaware existed. A setting can relate to another location in another individual's life. A decision made by a character can be interpreted in numerous ways depending upon who is listening and what experiences they have had.
While listener involvement does not diminish the songwriter's intended purpose, it expands the potential scope of the work. Songs written by Bear the Astronot can originate from a variety of sources including a personal experience, a fictional concept, an inner monologue or an image that recurs repeatedly throughout his works while allowing the listener to develop their own unique connection to the work.
Recurring Images Help Establish a Greater Universe
Narrative development can occur outside the confines of a single track. Imagery, questions, settings, and emotional tensions can recur throughout multiple tracks. As the surrounding music develops, so too do the interpretations associated with each image, question, setting, and emotional tension. Something initially perceived as a minor element can develop into part of a greater pattern. This is why Bear the Astronot views albums as universes rather than simple compilations of recordings. Songs can communicate independently; however, songs can also recall each other. A listener who continues to follow Bear the Astronot's catalog will eventually identify associations between songs that were not evident during an initial listening experience.
The listening experience becomes less akin to reading a collection of disconnected stories and more akin to navigating a location comprised of interconnected spaces. Visit Bear the Astronot's website to discover how individual tracks contribute to these larger project universes.
Landscapes Can Convey Emotion
The significance of landscape is integral to Bear the Astronot's viewpoint; however, it is never restricted to one generalized image of Arizona. The landscape extends from the pine forests and cold winters of Flagstaff to the deserts of northern Arizona and the arid roads and mesas of the Navajo Nation and finally to the urban heat of Phoenix and Tucson beneath the Sonoran cactus. Landscapes can serve as memory, atmosphere, distance, refuge, threat, scale and motion. Roads traveling through mountains possess different emotional rhythms than streets winding through cities. The expanse of canyons generates different perceptions of time than a crowded room.
Arid deserts, forests, neighborhoods, roads and varying elevations each possess their own languages.
Production Can Convey Part of the Narrative
The narrative is not merely confined to the lyrics. Rhythms, silences, distortion, vocal treatments, sampling techniques, repetitions and changes in textures can also communicate information. Production can create immediacy or remoteness in relation to a voice. Production can transform memories into transmissions or enable listeners to hear internal debates occurring within themselves. Production can generate illusions of instability within songs. A section characterized by minimalism can effectively convey isolation more than an additional verse. Sounds that are repeated can act as characters. A beat that shifts under the same words can alter their meaning. This is where Bear Cole's songwriting and production meet under the identity of Bear the Astronot.
Words and sounds function together as components of a single narrative environment.
Not All First Person Lyrics Are Autobiographical Statements About the Artist
A first-person lyric is not always a representation of factual information about the artist. Songwriting can incorporate characters, modified viewpoints, composite experiences, imagined conversations and manifestations of self that occur only within specific projects. Lyrics written directly from a personal perspective can be edited, condensed or restructured in order to support a specific song. That flexibility enables Bear the Astronot to examine concepts from multiple perspectives. The narrator can be reliable, erroneous, divided or still attempting to comprehend what has occurred. Voices can conflict with each other. A project can contain conflicting interpretations without requiring them to be resolved into an authorized explanation.
Uncertainty encourages deeper listening.
Visual Elements Provide Additional Pathways
Videos and visual materials provide additional avenues for conveying stories without reducing them to fixed illustrations. Color, typography, editing techniques, movements, performances and locations can establish new relationships with music. Visual interpretations can enhance clarity in some aspects of a song while enhancing ambiguity in others. View Bear the Astronot's videos to observe how visual elements contribute another layer of narrative to his works. The objective is not to inform viewers precisely what each song means; rather it is to provide another means for experiencing the ambiance surrounding each song.
Albums Can Evolve Over Time
The Snowball Album format illustrates this concept particularly well. DUST is an evolving Bear the Astronot album whose initial installments are currently available while additional songs continue to be composed, completed and released. Each subsequent installment can provide additional insights into or modify prior installments' interpretations. The evolving album does not simply expand in length; rather internal relationships can become increasingly intricate. Details that previously appeared unrelated can establish connections with subsequently added material. Unanswered questions can elicit partial responses — or become more compelling due to new material complicating them. Audiences can observe this evolution as it transpires.
Mystery Is Not Synonymous With Confusion
Leaving room for interpretation does not imply abandoning clarity. Even though destinations remain open-ended; songs still require an emotional core. Language, performances and production require guiding listeners toward something meaningful regardless of whether their ultimate destinations remain undefined. Finding a balance between these two extremes is crucial. Excessive clarity can reduce songs to statements. Insufficient connection can cause songs to appear arbitrary. Storytelling employed by Bear the Astronot exists between these two extremes providing sufficient structure for creating worlds — and sufficient space for those worlds to continue existing.
Storytelling Continues Through Audiences
Bear the Astronot's music does not anticipate that every listener will arrive at the same conclusion. Bear the Astronot's music expects that listeners will attend closely. Pay attention to recurring images. Note how sounds evolve around words. Seek connections between songs, projects, landscapes and perspectives. Allow for uncertainty when it possesses greater integrity than convenience-based answers. The narrative is present — yet it remains unsealed. Experience Bear the Astronot through listening to his works, following a curated listening trajectory or exploring information about him and his creative world. Bear the Astronot is an integral part of the independent creative community established with 1st Drop Music linking each recorded work to a wider array of releases, visual representations, stories and creative identities.