FiveManJob

@fivemanjobflashes.bsky.social

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Flashes profile only - my Bsky profile here: @fivemanjob.bsky.social

ABSOLUTELY NEW In 1963, John Cage organized a performance of Erik Satie's Vexations. The written score covers just half a page; Satie meant for it to be repeated 840 times. Above the piece, Satie wrote, "It would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities." The performance, at a disused vaudeville theater, took eighteen hours, played by a rotating crew of ten pianists, among them John Cale—who would later cofound the Velvet Underground-and the choreographer Viola Farber. Tickets were five bucks. Only one person watched the entire performance. When it was over, somebody yelled, "Encore!" Afterward, Cage drove to his house outside the city. He slept twelve hours. "When I got up, the world looked new," Cage wrote later. "Ab-solutely new."