Paul Lazar in Cage Shuffle Marathon, at La MaMa.
Photo: Amanda Lynn Kim
In 1958, the composer John Cage gave a lecture in Brussels. A raconteur, he often told little stories during his performances; this time he made his tales the entire talk, prolonging or hastening the telling of each one to take exactly a minute. In Brussels, he delivered 30 stories in 30 minutes; later in the U.S., he expanded the set to 90, performing it alongside a David Tudor composition. Instead of holding forth on chance-based operations or musical theory, Cage’s texts are droll half-parables, gathered as he studied Zen, or gave talks, or hunted for mushrooms. (You can hear Cage and Tudor performing Indeterminacy here; Eddie Kohler turned the…
