oo Vexations. One of my absolute favourites. You really need to look at the
score to get the added bonus of what's going on, but even without that level
of engagement, it is a wonder-piece.
Funnily enough, apropos an earlier post showing off a monster unpunctuated
sentence, in my student days we made a tape loop of a single iteration of
Vexations (before the days of sampling) in order to automate a 24 hour
performance. Suffice it to say, it was hard work.
P
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Christopher Walker
> Sent: 29 November 2007 00:45
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Cage's *boring*
>
> <snip>
> "If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still
> boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one
> discovers that it is not boring at all." --John Cage.
>
> Yes, tends to reconcile one to the world as it is. Very motivational.
> I think Dale Carnegie said it first tho --in "How to Stop Worrying
> and Start Living." [JG]
> <snip>
>
> Actually that is precisely _not_ the point: 'this intolerable world'.
>
> Cage told this story of a reading from *Diary: How to Improve the World
(You
> Will Only Make Matters Worse)*: Cage read; audience listened. Observing
that
> the sheaf of pages in his hand was beginning to diminish, some showed
signs
> of relief. Finally the last page was reached. Cage picked up another
> sheaf...
>
> Which is comparable, in a way, to Enzo Del Re, an Italian radical singer
> (*Lavorare con lentezza*: *Work Slowly*) of the 70s. He used a chair for
> percussion (an electric one had been used to execute the anarchists Saccho
> and Vanzetti in 1920) and played for as long as it took. As long as it
took,
> that is, for the final audience member to get up and leave the room,
> *winning* being a matter of who could hold out the longest. (More recently
> he has, I believe, composed a ballet for artichokes or something of that
> sort; but that's another story.)
>
> But this is only a (smallish) part of what's implied. Creation against
> erasure ('the wrong end of the pencil'), attention changed through length
> (in this sense reconciliation would be the _absence_ of attention; indeed
> the best known example of Satie's *furniture music* may be *Vexations*)
and
> the dissolution of composition (*music* not *composition*, of course: use
> rather than ownership) are just three others.
>
> CW
> _______________________________________________
>
> 'How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the
> Pilgrims' (piece by David Rosenboom 1969-72)
|