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"Readings from Finnegans' Wake"
Vancouver 1978 - same experience
tolve wrote:
>
> robin whittle wrote:
>
> >I saw John Cage perform in Adelaide in 1976, when a mini-busload of us LaTrobe
> >University music students went to the Adelaide Festival. In the midst of a 40
> >(?) minute mind-numbing recitation of randomly chosen, softly spoken,
> >meaningless disconnected sylables, spontaneous, nervous applause broke out and
> >I joined in. The man with the sunny disposition didn't miss a stochastic beat
> >and continued for the remaining 15 minutes or so of the piece.
>
> believe i caught that tour in potsdam, ny usa. cage explained that the
> syllables were chinese and selected via the I Ching. my mind similarly
> numbed. if it was actually the same piece, our common experience was merely
> derived from excerpts of what i believe had a running time of 48 hours. at
> the performance i attended, an entire theater emptied save for 20 audience
> members who were then invited onstage for a question answer period. i cut
> my next class and remained (took a bit of hell for it but ultimately worth
> it).
>
> cage then went on for around 30 minutes explaining how the universe was
> completely random. after which someone suggested that he might not be
> correct as every event can only be based on what comes before. cage looked
> up, scratched his beard, looked back at the man and said: "you're right."
> and we moved on to other topics.
>
> incidentally robin, without myself really understanding: my you tied that
> random thread together nicely!
>
> tolve
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Jean Piche
Universite de Montreal
http://mistral.ere.umontreal.ca/~pichej |