Silence by Valentin Bazarov
John Cage’s piece 4’33” – the infamous four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence – is commonly thought of as a joke. Even serious music criticism has a hard time treating it as little more than a novelty:
“At the first performance in 1952 it was played (if that’s the right word) by a pianist who indicated the movements by raising and lowering the piano lid; and it made an arresting point about the nature of silence – as something other than an absence of sound and a way to make the human ear aware of the persistent universe of sonic activity that surrounds us – the universe that Cage called Music.
However, 4’33’ demonstrates both the strength and the weakness of Cageian method. It was a great idea that still packs a certain punch as theory – but does it live as a piece? Hardly. Like a comedian’s joke, you can only use it once per audience and that’s it. Done.”
Chuckle chuckle.
In a concert setting, one is naturally inclined to focus on auditory sensations. In most Western cultures this is actually work for many people, and so listening is a good way to focus one’s attention. What Cage has done is to use this setting to introduce this kind of attention, not as a one off joke, but as an introduction to a practice.
Here is what I think is implicit in 4’33”: it is an invitation. It invites us to notice what fills the spaces we leave in the world when our awareness frees itself from a predictable fixation and travels around our environment. In this sense of course, 4’33” will be different every time it is “performed.” Four and a half minutes of silence is never the same. In fact, take that time right now and sense what you hear.
Beyond the noises, beyond what is “out there”, is the noises “in here:” thoughts, self-talk, reflections, insight. The next level of awareness can be about our reaction to the silence. Are we uncomfortable? Do we squirm? Or can we rest into what is around us right now and pay attention to the questions and the thoughts that arise in our mind as we navigate the relationship between our minds and our environment.
In fact, experiencing 4’33” over and over will develop in us a capacity to reflect with pointed and deep awareness. As a performance, perhaps 4’33” is a bit of an unrepeatable joke, but as an invitation, it might actually be a quick way to introduce the practice of introspection, whether in a concert hall, or sitting in front of a computer. Repeated over and over, our appreciation of the silences between events grows, and perhaps our need to fill space lessens.
Dave Pollard got the idea a few weeks ago to run a “Great Canadian Song Contest” and I agreed to be one of the judges. The results are in and posted at his blog, and although this is just about as unscientific a poll as you could imagine, the final list would still be a wonderful introduction to non-Canadians to ourselves and our land.
Canadian Railroad Trilogy tied with A Case of You for fist place, by the way.
Lately here in British Columbia, we have been in some major labour strife between the government and the public sector unions, most recently the hospital employees union. (HEU) A couple of weeks ago there was a strike that escalated and then ended with legislation that was perceived as illegal by some union workers who stayed out on strike, gaining support from other unions and nearly precipitating a general strike in the province.
I was talking last night with a friend of mine, an emergency room nurse who is, by all accounts, left leaning, but who doesn’t like strikes in general in the health care system because they do end up hurting patients and leading to blocked thinking on both sides, entrenched positions and general bad will all round. She does acknowledge however that our health care system is under brutal attack from our current government and radical action needs to be undertaken.
I agree with her. I am most interested by how these kinds of civil actions evolve and change. With crises like this, there is often a flash point, where one side takes on the other at the level of engagement that it perceives of the other. For example, anti-globalization protesters have over recent years engaged in violent protests which mirrors the violence they perceive to be coming from pro-globalization corporations and governments. This is always a first stage response to a crises in civil society. What comes next is always interesting to me, because after the bluster, there is always a chance to transcend the current reality, find some common ground and move on, with both sides changed. It doesn’t always happen this way, and sometimes the cycle of reaction continues for a long time before any progress is made.
But last night, talking to my friend, we wondered if there could be a better way. And we started thinking about the best way for the HEU to make their point, claim high ground AND not hurt the people in care that suffer during strikes.
We decided that what was really at stake was CARE. The HEU was protesting the government’s privatization of their jobs, complaining that it would result in a lack of care in a system that is already perceived as underresourced and unable to treat [patients humanely. In many ways, nurses are the last bastions of care in a whole area of civil society that was founded on care.
So we started wondering what nurses could do to make their point, and we came up with a radical idea that brought to mind Vaclav Havel’s politics of living in truth.
What if all the nurses went to work instead of striking? What if every patient had three nurses looking after them instead of just essential service levels of “care.” If the issue is about care, what better way to demonstrate that then to show the world what a fully functioning system would look like? Instead of marching outside for a pittance of strike pay, take a week of protest and show up for work and simply take care of the patients in the system. The nurses could even set up large tents outside the hospitals, reminiscent of a disaster scene, as if a large earthquake had hit and everyone’s hands were needed to care for the casualties. That would send that message that the health care crises is approaching disaster proportions and that it’s all about care and THIS is what care looks like.
It would get really juicy if the employer started preventing nurses from coming into the hospital to work. The government wouldn’t stand a chance against this expression of the truth. To be put in a situation where they were preventing caring professionals from caring for people would be untenable.
The government is privatizing jobs, so having nurses OUT of their workplace is exactly the image that the government wants to see. Yelling, angry protesters don’t send the message that these people are actually caring professionals, and that level of anger plays into the government’s hands as well.
But actually ignoring the government’s plans, recognizing the real need which is that people are not receiving a the care they need, and going to work without the government’s sanction…THAT would be powerful.
I’m making the gradual move to more and more open source software. Recently I have been using Mozilla Firefox (brilliant) for web browsing, Thunderbird (works just fine, and pretty good on the junk mail) for email and a Mozilla plug-in for my calendar (still pretty raw, but I only use it for keeping appointments). And just this week, I’ve committed myself to making the full on move to Open Office for most of the other functions I use my PC for, mostly word processing and the odd spreadsheet and powerpoint.
I want to do this because I believe that Open Source is really something we should all be supporting. It is more than just a model for software development. It is a model, as my friend Rob Paterson pointed out to me, for an entire economy. A model based on sharing, decentralization, passion and responsibility. With Open Source, if you need a feature, you build it, or you offer to pay someone to build it for you. Everything is transparent, so you can pick your spots and make a difference. Anyone can contribute to making the software work better, it all depends what you have to offer.
because Open Source software is free, any cash contribution you make to it’s development is still a bargain for the end user, and because the software is developed by volunteers, resources are used efficiently, not tied up in excessive marketing or, legal protection or administrative structure. Open Source supports light organizations focused on producing quality products.
In many ways, this is the leading edge of a new way of doing business, one embodied in a social way by what we are doing at GiftHub for example and trying to kick start with the Opening Space for Giving to Flourish Conference in Chicago this July.
Open Source is nothing new of course, but it’s starting to make a big move into the world of the moderately techno-savvy folks like me. As powerful free programs like Open Office become more and more available, I think it will force the proprietary companies to make some changes although we’re probably a long way off from knocking off the big boys.
I’m still wedded to Microsoft in the operating system though, using XP, despite the crazy week I had last week with the Sasser worm. I use free tools for most of my other work though, including (the newly improved) Blogger for the weblogs, Winamp for audio and video, NoteTab Light for html markup and AntiVir for virus protection.
But it won’t be long until I make the move to Linux I think. It needs a bigger time investment from me, but perhaps with the next computer I buy, Linux will find it’s way onto one of the boxes in the house.
By the way, you can find tons of open source programs at SourceForge.
What’s your experience of Open Source?
From this month’s Harper’s Index:
Chance that an American adult believes that “politics and government are too complicated to understand”: 1 in 3
Chance that an American who was home-schooled feels this way: 1 in 25
Harper’s quotes a new research study from the National Home Education Research Institute as the source.