Apollo with kithara, Palatine Museum, Rome

"In John Cage's wake one could see a plastic bottle bobbing and floating. There were strange things inside: A stone from Knossos, a manzanita leaf, a Dr. Peppers bottle cap, a cactus needle and a page from Schoenberg's Harmonielehrer. We scooped it from the sea and reported our findings to the local authorities - they concluded, knowledgeably that it was the makings of a new piece, but in any case perfectly safe for children." As I wrote this, a solar-powered Spotted Owl flew over the Crimea River, so far off course that it caused all the music in the world in that moment to go flat by about 50 cents, or a half tempered tone. On the banks of the river sat the Sierra Club - the hottest joint in the area - and that night they were featuring evolutionary music from the Devonian Period: at the piano bar, Jerry Hunt and Maria Callas, In the main Ballroom Braxton and LaMonte Young, and mixing in upstairs discoteque, Maryanne Amacher and Karlheinz. The erudite DJ, Frederic Rzewski was being interviewed by Carl Stone:..".according to Homer the five endangered spices are Mandrake, New York Dill, Icelandic Roquette, Creeping Lemon Thyme and Pigswort....."

Everybody was there: Bird, Mack the Knife, Duckworth, Fats, Christian Wolff, Moondog, Saints Ursula and Cecilia, Suzuki Akio, Wadada Leo, Dreyblatt, Big Ludwig, Pavarotten, Elton Johnson, The Mongolians, Dog No More, Oliver Lake,The Albanian Mafia, Hildegard Bingo, Carl Stallings, Rubenstein, The Denpasar English horn quartet, Kosugi, Monk, The Pines of Rome, Billie, Mama La Mozart, Bald Eagle Arnold, Waltzing Matilda, The Rova, The Oakland Exhaust and Muffler Co., Fernet Branca, Spike Jones, The Minnesota Dumbeg Union, The Sorelle Sisters, Xenakis and the Edible Weeds...It was one hundred percent natural, upgraded to Midi - a mix of raw and cooked Anthropology, long before Kosher became legal. It was like in a Fake Book. Pistoletto walked into a mirror like he was dancing in a sound-pool of wet concrete. In the corner was a big pile of Electric Rags. Satie dressed as a furniture salesman and uttered 5 monosyllabic words on a fog horn. Rzewski was seen again tuning his acetyline torch to Teitelbaum's tibetan bowls, for a new version of Attica, where he once studied with Pythagoras. Teitelbaum in turn sampled a Golem's heart with his defibrillator. Just then A quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog; a lion Roared in Tuscany, an elephant danced in eleven-four time, Aki Takahashi fitted a catalytic converter to her grand-piano, and Steve lacy found an abandoned Intonarumori on an empty lot in Riga fixed it up and began writing a Futurist Opera. Tickets to this performance are available at the excess baggage counter opposite the Pathological Air Terminal, Bring your Luge and organic pulses.

Alvin Curran

For solo performance March 27th, 1998, at ROULETTE, New York City