Tuesday, June 15, 2010

4' 33''

Sybil's Garage asks authors to suggest a "musical accompaniment" to go with their story. For a moment, I thought about choosing 4'33'' by John Cage. Four thirty-three is a three movement score that instructs the musicians to not play their instrument for the duration of the piece.

(The Wikipedia article is actually pretty great.)

I was thinking about it as a joke, one with some seriously pretentious flavors, but then I realized that telling someone that the best accompaniment to your story is the choice of doing nothing else doesn't just taste of pretension... It positively roars with it. Of course you want your story to flood their eyes, overwhelm their nose, saturate their skin, and batter its way down their ears and throats...You want it to momentarily obliterate everything except the world it contains. But to actually imply that it does... That's just more confidence than I've got.

(If you're curious, I chose the Chaconne from the Partita no. 2 in D minor for solo violin by Mr. Awesomeness Incarnate, J. S. Bach. It's one of my favorite pieces of music in all the world, going forwards and back.)

3 comments:

x said...

Thank god. I would have shot you if you actually selected the Cage piece. You've got some guts to share your thoughts on the matter here. That's why you rock!

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