Cage Circus Chaos!

As soon as I ended a somewhat awkward post-performance / waiting to clap silence by saying "the end," I felt pretty good. With no run-through and a pretty loose yet calculated structure, I'd say we did pretty good at pulling it all off. Having never truly been on a stage like that and in front of others, I was a bit nervous (which wouldn't have changed whether there was 8 people or 800 in front of me). The simple beginning of just one person talking on stage was a good introduction and the mid-sentence stop which began 4'33" was just brilliant. It was amazing how long four and a half minutes felt and the way the mind would drift to all sorts of sounds, as the piece intended. Whether it be the hum of the room, people walking around the halls outside the theater, or just the shuffling of people in the room, our ears were made very aware of every little sound. I remember scratching at my beard at one point and it just seemed extremely loud and rough sounding. I was a little saddened that Lucier's long thin wire didn't quite pan out, but as was explained both in class and after the performance, the set-up is pretty temperamental. There was a kind of cool eerie and subtle type of feel to it, though, and there was definitely at least one moment where the magnet made a really cool sound. The centerpiece of the performance, and from what I could gather was most people's favorite, was Having Never Written a Note for Percussion when combined with the highly repetitive part of Cage's Lecture on Nothing. I'm very interested in hearing the recording of this, because it sure felt strange being on the inside of it and trying to speak as if there was no loud gong rising in intensity right next to me. I also really got into giving the reading a sort of monotone and pronounced tone to it, especially using key pauses after the word "slow." During the midpoint of my part and the height of the gong-banging frenzy, I literally felt like I wasn't speaking out loud and it was very strange to try to make myself feel like I was still reading in the same manner as before. I am very glad I took the advice of my fellow classmates in not changing to a higher volume and I'm also satisfied that I cut to the silent / sleep part a bit early to let the gong have a brief moment as the only sound being produced for the piece. Radio Music would have felt a bit too anti-climatic had it come right after Having Never Written... and the 4th segment was a nice sort of breather and going back to the Lecture on Nothing being the sole focus mostly. It was a bit hard to gauge how successful the Radio Music session was, with me being in the back and focussing on doing my part. I do remember a moment where I had heard someone else's radio fade out from a certain station right as I was fading in the same station, which was neat. I think overall the performance didn't really have any bad moments or weak points and that our small little audience enjoyed it to some degree. I really enjoyed hearing that one man tell us how he had seen a Cage Circus/ Radio Music in the 60s with Cage himself there! That was quite impressive and it would have been fun to get more of a sense of how it compared to ours. Also the woman pointing out that at 71 she was pretty open minded to be coming to something like this, which was kind of funny. I really dug the fact that the audience asked each of us, as performers, are views on the experience. I think all of us got a real nice opportunity to give our thoughts on not just that night but how the class in general had helped shape and form our ideas about not just experimental or avant garde styles, but music and sound in general. I will definitely look forward to hearing the recording of this night! Hopefully now in the future I can experience more things similar the stuff we talked about in class with a better understanding of some of the elements at work. Well, it's been fun... have a nice winter break / life / eeyah!