<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)
