<<(More recently
he has, I believe, composed a ballet for artichokes or something of that
sort; but that's another story.)>>
HAHHAA.
laughed
KS
On 29/11/2007, Christopher Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> <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)
>
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