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by
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PRE DAWN HOURS serves as a platform for experiments in scalable marketing, aesthetic openness, and the establishment of methods for more ethical appreciation of art.

THE BEST WALKING
I DO IS IN THE HOURS

before most have awakened wherever I am.

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There's little to do, which means there's little to change, and my thoughts are largely theoretical. As the hours pass, the day moves from theory to practice (in theory); later on to history. 

 

Growing up, I'd stay awake to stave off that conclusion. There wasn't an hour early enough to leave the house and take in a sky every day in short supply, with purples and blues and pinks that would give their all to empty sidewalks and limestone and brick. I'd walk the streets before dawn, imagining a comfortable life with little to do that I did not want to do, and everything that would keep me warm, well-fed, and free to think without end.

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I count myself fortunate that I could grab a stoop and read when my body grew too tired to keep a pace I liked. I count myself fortunate that I could keep music with me as company, off tapes sometimes recorded just hours before. I could rewind a tape and relive a moment that felt sweet when it first landed: some ballet of early traffic in an intersection; the first real sun off a big, broad window. I'd be inspired to move again. I'd picture it all happening again, with sweet lighting and great timing, down to a beat. I'd spend time in replaying time.

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The sun's final rising over the tallest buildings makes everything flat against the weather of the day. Nothing and no one can help becoming what is, ceasing for a time to be what could. Such is the give-and-take of living in a world where, eventually, the streets fill again with people, and life becomes again about reckoning with the facts of existence.

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Some leave home desperate to leave, and others desperate to return. Their days are consumed with thoughts of how to manage to discover, or hold on to, or reclaim who or what it is they truly want, labeling that sensation as home. Where comfort rests. Where safety resides in walls or beds or books or shoulders. Where identity is pure and incontrovertible. They feel a tug of time at the hem of their shirt, and understand that sensation is hard to define yet easy to waste.

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When I walk as the sun rides high, I'm at work, my ears perked to what I've picked to keep me company, even just the change in pressure as the air grows humid or rain rolls out. At sunset I'm walking to wherever I'm to rest—having grown older and infinitely more comfortable with sleep, where I dream often of a life that takes place on that line between night and morning. When I wake up and I walk just before dawn is when I'm home.

"PRE DAWN HOURS serves as a platform for experiments in responsible marketing, aesthetic openness, and the establishment of methods for more ethical appreciation of art."

LEARNING MORE ABOUT

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Learning More

RESPONSIBLE
MARKETING

PRE DAWN HOURS begins at a time when the culture bears no shortage of websites, podcasts, trendspotters, influencers, and curators seeking to stand out by making more of themselves than what they're presenting. This effort takes the view that identity of the presenter should matter less than the content presented: that there is a way to make a show popular with its enthusiasm over the work presented, and where the 

AESTHETIC
OPENNESS

All music has value in the effort it takes to write, record, produce, master, release, or promote it. Someone(s) worked hard.

 

PRE DAWN HOURS will seek out music of all genres, subgenres, and microgenres: tracks which demonstrate not only this effort, but also the connections between genres that promotes greater openness in personal taste, under the presumption that liking more great music means listening to more great music. 

ETHICAL
APPRECIATION

Whatever one's attitudes about the practical methods and attendant economic and cultural implications of consuming music today, reaching for an ethical, equitable method of consumption retains value, even in the attempt.

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PRE DAWN HOURS will seek to outline the challenges of developing such a system by establishing a foundation of common understanding and evaluating possible equitable solutions, no matter the seeming improbability of execution. Together, we are smart enough to find a way that responds to our cultural wants and need for artistic works and respects the labor in producing such works.

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