We posted a note on poems inspired by John Cage performances on the Silence Cage List and heard from Mr. Whiting with a copy of this interesting poem, which appears not to have been published by the late Eric Mottram. We’re planning to do a broadside of this poem, but until then, please enjoy! Jesse

This tidbit comes courtesy John Whiting. Whiting regularly contributes articles about food, and diatribes on the state of the arts and society, to European and American publications. Now in semi-retirement, he was until last year the News Editor for Fine Food Digest, the trade journal of the Guild of Fine Food Retailers.

The first London performance of John Cage’s Solos for Voice 93-96, 1988, commissioned by Electric Phoenix, took place in in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on March 15th, 1990. Eric Mottram, poet and professor at King’s College, University of London, was in the audience. I had given him a recording of our studio rehearsal with Cage and he wrote this poem shortly thereafter. This is the text as he typed it and gave it to me:

Jesse’s going to expand on this in a future blog posting. More shortly!