I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it.
John Cage
Michael Hunter and Derek Phillips did John Cage‘s Lecture on Nothing at the Performance Studies International conference. Stanford’s Roble Gym. The old fencing studio, before they gutted it and turned it into something forgettable. Late. Maybe after midnight. Empty room. Maybe two people wandered in.
Here’s what they did: vocal performance, live soundtrack built from digitally manipulated sounds pulled from the venue itself. Reconstructing Cage’s 1949 lecture, but making it breathe in that specific space, at that specific hour. Brian Yarish made the chair. Not just any chair, the chair that held the whole thing together. The mirrors. The exhaustion. The commitment to do the work when nobody’s there to see it.
This is what matters. Not the packed house where everyone congratulates themselves for showing up. The empty room. The late hour. The people who give enough of a damn to do it anyway. When the space still has its soul intact and becomes part of the performance itself. When it’s real because it has to be, not because anyone’s watching.
That’s the night that counted.