February 1, 2008
4′33″
I watched my music business students talk about John Cage’s 4′33″ today. One of the students (one of my best) had just encountered it in my other class and … well let’s just say she is learning a lot in college. I asked her to explain what she’d seen - she saw the YouTube performance of it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJagb7hL0E) earlier today and she was floored - not in a very good way. “If I paid money to see that and there was just silence, I’d be very, very angry” she said in a bit more colorful language than that. The class was hysterical by the time she finished describing it.
I think that John Cage would have loved to have been in the room watching 10 students laugh their asses off at the prospect of a silenced orchestra at a concert. I know I loved it!
I’m sitting in Noodles Anonymous trying to coerce myself to stay at a motel tonight instead of driving 46 blizzarded miles home. I’m just afraid that if I stay overnight here I might accidentally not come back. There has to be a line drawn somewhere and 10pm is going to be that line.
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