As Slow as Possible
A tribute to John Cage's work, the longest running non-computerized piece of music ever performed.
As Slow as Possible
It's likely you're familiar with one of this particular community's proto daddies, John Cage. If you're not, maybe check him out (where have you been/how did you find me!?), or read some of his writings on things like silence and indeterminacy. This newest boot is a tribute to one one his pieces titled Organ2 /ASLSP, also known as As Slow as Possible. The conceit of the piece is for the performer to play, well, as slow as possible. This has taken some performers to prologue the piece up to 14 hours, or however long it might take to hold one's bladder. And we all know how tiny an organist's bladder can be, right?
Oh, you think that's slow? Some intrepid heads over in Halberstadt, Germany have taken this idea to the extreme. They intend to stretch the piece out for nearly 639 years, the same amount of time from the construction of the world's first 12-tone Gothic organ in Halberstadt in 1361 and the beginning of the next millennium. Starting this particular performance in 2001, part one (of eight) will take 70 years. The custom-built organ is housed in an 11th century convent and performance is overseen by the John Cage Organ Foundation Halberstadt, who's committed to playing the piece for centuries to come, employing sandbags to play the organ instead of [human] organists. It's metal as fuck.
This past February, a D4 note was pressed, which won't be changed until August 2026 when an A4 is pressed and sustained until its release in 2027. Mark your calendars. It makes you wonder if this is some kind of cosmic joke from old man Johnny Cage and the organizers of the performance--will the piece ever be finished without interruption? Will it outlast future wars? Climate change? Technical difficulties? The only way out is through.
So, in keeping with my sound//space explorations presented in tshirt form (see Rothko Chapel, Xenakis, et al.) , I made a tee for this that pulls in some medieval-inspired imagery and of course the organ itself. It'll be a cream color print on a dark graphite gray shirt. I'm still waiting to hear about availability of blanks, so if you wanna scoop and then change your size once I know what they'll be, please do! Contact me directly for international orders so I can look up shipping costs.
As you know, the world is small, and our funny little soundscape community is even smaller. Please consider sending this to a likeminded friend. <3 Ben