A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings

TALK I

The thought has sometimes occurred to me that my pleasure in composition renounced as it has been in the field of music, continues in the field of writing words, anc that explains why, recently, I write so much. I know however that sometime soon I will renounce that too. I admired Buckminster Fuller when he began his lecture at the YMHA in New York in the spring of 1966 by saying that he never read prepared texts for he didn't want to do for his audiences what they individually could do for themselves, i.e., read. Having these feelings, and invited by the Once Group to Ann Arbor with David Tudor for their Festival in September 1965, I decided to improvise a talk. David Tudor had collected a number of throat-, lip-, and other microphones and various electronic components for modulating sound. He prepared a sound-system having six channels for which I was to be the sound-source. He had the assistance of Gordon Mumma, composer and founder of a company that manufactures electronic music components called Cybersonics , Inc. I wrote down the topics given below I was interested in talking about. (I had intended that there would be one hundred and twenty-eight subjects, but I didn't get this number written.) I also asked Robert Ashley, composer and one of the Once Group to converse with me and/or to elect for that purpose anyone else in the audience who was willing to do likewise. He conversed for awhile, then left; shortly Bob Raushenberg appeared and we talked. Very little of anything that was said, due to the manipulations of the sound-system by David Tudor and Gordon Mumma, was comprehensible to the audience. The performance was an entire evening (one and a half to two hours). It took place under the night sky on the roof of a building, all floors of which, including the one we were on, were ordinarily devoted to the parking of automobiles. With the help of several others, I arranged the folding chairs so that they were not in rows but, to all appearances, haphazardly placed. I was surprised to see shortly after the performance began that the audience had arranged itself in rows. They were seated facing in the direction of the roofed-over stairwell, one flight above them at one corner of the building, where David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley (later Robert Rauschenberg) and I were seated in the midst of electronic equipment. The loud-speakers surrounded the audience. After it became evident what they were "in for," quite a number of people present went away. Those who remained enjoyed themselves, sat in pairs and informal circles, sent delegates off to the town below. These returned with refreshments, six-packs of beer, etc. At the suggestion of Andrea Chiyo, film-maker, my lists are not printed in columns or rows but are scattered on the following pages, somewhat as we had arranged the chairs in Ann Arbor. zyxwvuts TALK I zyxw 141 Politics­economics ^osutvvoods Ze„ zyxwvutsr Feldti Sound­system/music ^ zyxwvu $ ß S^ luotva The series zyxwv ■ % > % % \* Fuller % / Co^ ,wtse 0> c Q U .S a, Mushrooms %j Jaguar/Mike/psychosomatic Hawaii/island divided ^•° ^ o* v^6 ^« * Af, * * ­ * . * , iefy O z a 2 PQ Led ci "um species Λ zyxwvutsrq ^ zyxwvu & zyxwvut sP XP S* Letter to Boucourechliev; stamps XP&«*** zyxw Λ zyxwv°Oi Ϊ&* Panese mushr°om . ,* «max/J*** . ^enlosfmthe^oas Disappear^ of ^ Blecttomcs ^ e n What we need to know now is: How many services do we require? ^ . . n o diatonic effect ^ ­ CoplandtangT·"° * ^ ^ x Tf payment required, many credit cards/if none, one λ ^ ^ «t * * * * * * F o t e ^ ^ ­ ^ ^ Dn ** „ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 4 ^ .^^oreaaeS Argument vs. agreement Theatre in the round/audience in the round zy 144 ...