LISTENING TO MORTON FELDMAN AT PUTNEY

Last night for 6 hours we listened to Morton Feldman a quartet play a dirge - a requiem for the planet - like the squeaking of mice and tiny beings barely audible. As if the grass were speaking as if the rocks were singing in rhythmic breaths as if all living things were breathing just audible the violin was breathing just audible and I saw visions of auscwitz and empty factories random clanging of abandoned machinery - like Red Hook was - the abandoned sugar factory by the sea -  isolation - sounds of the wind thru unused machinery. The end of civilization as we know it.  Always there were very quiet bird chirps there were no endings or beginnings no driving rhythms building up just repetitious sounds of the stringed instruments going nowhere - breathing that didn’t stop or begin - 6 hours without a break these musicians. In the dark as the sun went down we were in a room filled with woven oriental rugs at Putney school where my daughter went 35 years ago in the new arts building spacious industrial looking lots of light huge ceilings. The music had bird calls frogs clanking and breathing on and on and on..what seemed like an ending did not end just kept going on and visions of auswhitz kept coming and going and old industrial abandoned buildings kept going on and high shrieks  the loneliest despair.

The most piercing keening floating thru the air and then there was silence you could feel this silence after it stoped after 6 hours.

 

The little bones lay on the table 

The delicate little bones of a bird