{"id":4827,"date":"2026-04-20T01:49:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T01:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/04\/20\/433-and-the-revolutionary-ordinary\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T01:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T01:49:17","slug":"433-and-the-revolutionary-ordinary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/04\/20\/433-and-the-revolutionary-ordinary\/","title":{"rendered":"4\u201933 and the revolutionary ordinary"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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A few years ago, I kept a notebook for a camp where I drew the day\u2019s soundscapes:<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Darrin Zhou<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Likely, this was the result of a neurotic urge driven by the lack of access to recorded music at the time. I wanted to listen to something. Still, the camp was a lovely, lush place, with its own sort of innocent totality; I could watch the time pass under the rocks in a river creek, and eventually, the world filled itself out, exposure to harmony mediated through birdsong. Music became everything and nothing.<\/p>\n

It was here I understood John Cage.<\/p>\n

Imagine: You watch Cage sit the virtuoso David Tudor on his piano bench, on a late 1952 summer afternoon in Woodstock, New York, your ears filled with the night\u2019s erudite programming and eccentric etudes. You look on as Cage pulls out his stopwatch and gazes reverently at the closed lid of the grand piano for four minutes 33 seconds<\/a>, performing nothing except static silence.\u00a0<\/p>\n