Thelonious Monk
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2006
- Posts
- 2,483
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- 13
after a quick search, i haven't found any recent (see: not 3 years old) threads on this matter.
i think i'm a pretty open minded dude. i can tolerate a certain level of "weirdness". (music like The Flaming Lips and some pretty weird ambient, books like Ulysses (that was pretty tough to tackle at my age, admittedly), stuff like that)
but lately, as i continue to download more and more music, and look through the vast boxes of books in my possession for something worthwhile, i realize: what the hell are some people thinking when they jot an idea down? i'm not new to "experimental" music, and "modern" art... but seriously, when someone told me "If you liked Ulysses, then you'll love Finnegans Wake!" i wanted to inflict some sort of pain on him. "That wasn't your cup of tea? How about Virginia Woolf!" blagh.
when i first listened to the "jazz cover" of 4' 33", again, i became violent.
Quote:
i can pay attention to ambient sounds around me without having to buy a tape of silence. not to mention the wasting of a perfectly good BBC Symphony Orchestra.
but wait! it all makes sense now! referring to "As Slow As Possible", which is currently being played (see: wasting a perfectly good organ) on an ancient pipe organ in Germany.
Quote:
they're in on it together. "Art trolls"! (pardon the dumb joke)
i mean no disrespect to the dead with my post, and maybe i'm just missing something. am i just too young to appreciate the works of experimental artists? sorry for this scattered, unorganized, hissy rant, but i think this is the only thing that i haven't complained about on the internet.
i think i'm a pretty open minded dude. i can tolerate a certain level of "weirdness". (music like The Flaming Lips and some pretty weird ambient, books like Ulysses (that was pretty tough to tackle at my age, admittedly), stuff like that)
but lately, as i continue to download more and more music, and look through the vast boxes of books in my possession for something worthwhile, i realize: what the hell are some people thinking when they jot an idea down? i'm not new to "experimental" music, and "modern" art... but seriously, when someone told me "If you liked Ulysses, then you'll love Finnegans Wake!" i wanted to inflict some sort of pain on him. "That wasn't your cup of tea? How about Virginia Woolf!" blagh.
when i first listened to the "jazz cover" of 4' 33", again, i became violent.
Quote:
Another cited influence for this piece came from the field of the visual arts. Cage's friend and sometimes colleague Robert Rauschenberg had produced, in 1951, a series of white paintings, seemingly "blank" canvases (though painted with white house paint) that in fact change according to varying light conditions in the rooms in which they were hung, the shadows of people in the room and so on. This inspired Cage to use a similar idea as he later stated, "Actually what pushed me into it was not guts but the example of Robert Rauschenberg. His white paintings… when I saw those, I said, 'Oh yes, I must. Otherwise I'm lagging, otherwise music is lagging'"; Cage's musical equivalent to the paintings uses the "silence" of the piece as an aural "blank canvas" to reflect the dynamic flux of ambient sounds surrounding each performance |
i can pay attention to ambient sounds around me without having to buy a tape of silence. not to mention the wasting of a perfectly good BBC Symphony Orchestra.
but wait! it all makes sense now! referring to "As Slow As Possible", which is currently being played (see: wasting a perfectly good organ) on an ancient pipe organ in Germany.
Quote:
ASLSP Performance Note: The title is an abbreviation of "as slow as possible." It also refers to "Soft morning city! Lsp!" the first exclamations in the last paragraph of Finnegans Wake (James Joyce). |
they're in on it together. "Art trolls"! (pardon the dumb joke)
i mean no disrespect to the dead with my post, and maybe i'm just missing something. am i just too young to appreciate the works of experimental artists? sorry for this scattered, unorganized, hissy rant, but i think this is the only thing that i haven't complained about on the internet.