Two deaf guys & John Cage's silence / Under heavy manners: Rockers vs Punks on the dancefloor

 

Two deaf guys turn up at the bus stop. So? I'm watching them sign to each other when I realise I'm wearing a badge by Mark Pawson, part of his John Cage series...

I watch them in their silent world, wondering if they too would like to wear the badge. Wouldn't that be a positive statement? After all, a lot of...um...(tries to think of PC term...) 'large' people celebrate their size as a good thing, don't they? If you played the deaf guys Cage's 4′33″  would it be the only piece of 'music' they could 'hear' as we do? Technically, no, because the background noise is supposed to be part of the piece (coughing, shuffling, whatever). But has it ever been recorded in a studio? Not as far as I know. 

I can't imagine life without music, my current passion being Rockabilly. Such as this...

Listening to some the other day I was reminded of the time we were appointed guardians of our DJ friend's equipment at a disco as things got heavy between the Rockers and Punks. Well, it was 1978 and we were all 'under heavy manners', you know. So we stood in front of the stage, I was by one set of speakers, when, having played an Elvis tune, he said "The best thing about that is the crackles at the end" - yes, he really did say that, but instead of trying to tear him to pieces the Rockers and Punks went at each other. It was quite a scrap. No-one tried to break it up because at village discos the 'security' was usually a local farmer who had no intention of getting thumped. We escaped unscathed, as did our friend's equipment. I imagine if he had played a 'live' recording of 4'33" there would have been a riot.

Kings Rd, 1977

Print: Certain Indifference / Being arty-farty with John Cage

Certain Indifference, R.Tomens, 2018

Dress down Fridays at Work is usually an excuse for employees to commit sartorial crimes and go unpunished; for me it sometimes means being able to wear a jacket with one of Mark Pawson's badges pinned to the lapel (that's how radical I am!). A favourite is from the John Cage set he made. Nobody has ever commented on it, until today.

A woman who works close by stopped me and said 'What does that say?' I showed her and some explanation was necessary, obviously, so I said it related to an 'artist from the 50s (no, I wasn't about to give a rundown of the decades he actually operated in or all the disciplines he covered) who made a recording called Four minutes, thirty-three seconds, it was silent'. She half-smiled and walked away, saying to the air something including the term 'arty-farty'.

I went away and thought about the term 'arty-farty'. I wondered if an equivalent existed in other languages, or is the philistine put-down particular to Britain (and America?). Put-down? Well, it is, by it's very essence, which is to suggest that anything deeper, artistically, than an oil painting of the countryside, or a portrait, is...'arty-farty'. Or worse, it's used by completely ignorant folk for whom art is an alien concept. 

Is liking Ed Ruscha 'arty-farty'? Is making a print such as the one above 'arty-farty'? Is going to Tate Modern 'arty-farty'? I don't know. It's most likely to be used as a class weapon, perhaps, as in the 'arty-farty' crowd who, by the very nature of both class and culture (in the UK), will be middle-class. 

Whatever. Perhaps next week I'll wear the I Love John Cage one...and probably be considered gay.