Four Point Three Three
(or: Manifolds of Experience)
(An exercise, à la John Cage, in the detachment
of voice from the auditory manifold of experience).
* * * * * * *
[1. The reader of this poem must allow precisely
four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence for
its performance.
2. During this time se should stand
at a lectern, with the text in hez hand and regarding
the audience, whilst contemplating profoundly the
most attractively æsthetic subject se can imagine; and
thinking – but not uttering! – the most appropriate
words for expressing its fundamental essence. (To add
dramatic impact, se might soundlessly mouth the words
that come to mind).
3. In order that the poem be performed
accurately, it will be helpful to have a timepiece, equipped
with a second-hand, clearly in the reader’s line of sight.
4. At the end of the allotted time, the performer should
bow slightly and then leave the lectern. This will signify
to the audience that the piece has ended.
5. If there is no
audience, the reader may choose to sit on a chair and
regard a blank TV screen, or plain wall, as se contemplates.
No concluding bow would then be necessary; but the silence
and time elements must be scrupulously respected if the full
æsthetic impact of this poem is to be realised as hez voice
is detached from the auditory manifold of experience].
* * * * * * *
Notes.
1. a. For ‘se’ read ‘he’ or ‘she’ } {One must try to
} at choice. {introduce some
b. For ‘he ’ read ‘his’ or ‘hers’ } {originality into an
{artwork of this kind.
2. The presenter may, if se wishes, announce the title of this text, but should otherwise say nothing.
3. This minimalist ‘performative text’ resulted from a comment by the ineffable Australian culture vulture, Germaine Greer, concerning John Cage’s ‘soundless [music] composition’ entitled 4’33” [i.e, Four Minutes Thirty-three Seconds]. She reportedly said, in a BBC Three radio-programme about this title [it can hardly be called a work]: “Music is being detached from the unsynthesised manifold of auditory experience”.
4. It is said that the phrase ‘unsynthesised manifold of experience’ was coined by Kant; but if so, he would never have suggested that representation could consist of nothing at all. Ms Greer seems to like the phrase ‘unsynthesised manifold’, but I’m not sure she understands what it means. On another occasion, for example, she wrote in the Guardian newspaper: “Art exists for no purpose beyond itself. The first attribute of the art object is that it creates a discontinuity between itself and the unsynthesised manifold”. Manifold [of] what?. The OED defines the word ‘manifold’ as meaning: ‘many and various; having different forms; a pipe or chamber leading to several openings’; it also defines the word ‘synthesise’ as: ‘make by synthesis’, ‘combine into a coherent whole’; ‘to produce (sound) electronically’. None of these definitions – assuming the word ‘unsynthesised’ means the opposite of ‘synthesised’ – seem to fit the quoted contexts.
5. The first ‘soundless music’ – a MS containing several blank staves entitled: Funeral March Composed for the Obsequies of a Great Deaf Man – may have been published by Alphonse Allais in 1897. (Nothing – not even nothing! – is new in the arts; but artists should keep trying to be genuinely original rather than unimaginatively derivative).
6. My text was devised in the spirit of the Codpiece that said to a Cuirass: “It needs more than one of us to play satyrical buggers!”. J.A.B.
