I W o u l d P r e f e r N o t T o

or

3′44″

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 03:44] all rights reserved

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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

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"Melgaço uncaged." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Two references are fundamental if we want to make the exegesis of this rattling Piece:

1- ´Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street´ is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. A Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who—after an initial bout of hard work—refuses to make copy and any other task required of him, with the words ´I would prefer not to´. The lawyer cannot bring himself to remove Bartleby from his premises, and decides instead to move his office, but the new proprietor removes Bartleby to prison, where he perishes. Numerous essays have been published on what, according to scholar Robert Milder, ´is unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction´ in the Melville canon.

´Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into still subtler form.´ (H.M.)

2- 4′33″ (pronounced ´Four minutes, thirty-three seconds´ or just ´Four thirty-three´) is a three-movement composition by American experimental composer John Cage (1912–1992). It was composed in 1952, for any instrument or combination of instruments, and the score instructs the performer(s) not to play their instrument(s) during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements. The piece purports to consist of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed, although it is commonly perceived as ´four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence´. The title of the piece refers to the total length in minutes and seconds of a given performance, 4′33″ being the total length of the first public performance. Conceived around 1947–48, while the composer was working on Sonatas and Interludes, 4′33″ became for Cage the epitome of his idea that any sounds may constitute music. It was also a reflection of the influence of Zen Buddhism, which Cage studied since the late 1940s. In a 1982 interview, and on numerous other occasions, Cage stated that 4′33″ was, in his opinion, his most important work. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes 4′33″ as Cage's ´most famous and controversial creation´.

´I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.´ (J.C.)

Absorbed both wind roses, we´ll embark on the polysemy and ironies of O.M. inasmuch as after so many years from the stupendous creations of Herman and John, Otacílio could not be more current and pertinent if through ´Three minutes, forty-four seconds´ (or just ´Three forty-four´), which - among its most conceptual manifestations - has already become, yes, one of my
p-r-e-f-e-r-r-e-d.

And I'll tell you why.

The complexity that´s present in this provocative ´single´ would be able to generate a Daedalian Thesis. There would be countless points of view, all equally noteworthy. So I see myself having to choose: which pathway to take that would be the most appropriate to our context? Well, it will then take the name of ´Žižek´ and also pays tribute to an anarchic silence.

Doctor of Philosophy, Politics and Education, the Brazilian Fernando Facó de Assis Fonseca wrote ´The Insupportable Smiling Of Bartleby, second Žižek´. An essay. As you may already know, Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian psychoanalytic philosopher, cultural critic, and Hegelian Marxist. His work is located at the intersection of a range of subjects, including continental philosophy, political theory, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, film criticism, and theology.

I will take such disquisition (by means of some excerpts) as my portable platform. ´Bartleby’s I would prefer not to, an insistent and compulsive refusal, makes the character a true revolutionary. This disciplinary denial is not an aestheticizing resistance that keeps him pure and away from the bureaucratic game that contaminates the environment with corrupted transactions etc. This rejection expresses a pure and empty gesture which instead of remain immaculate contaminates the system in question. Bartleby is revolutionary because his violence lies not in the internal space of the established order, but in the law which determines the internal coherence of the system.´

If Mr. Favó aims at showing ´how it´s possible to reverse the dominant logic of the post-ideological world for a gesture which is similar to the Bartleblyan rejection proposed by Žižek´, I deem it quite pertinent to make the same parallel from the Melgacian Piece.

´The Bartleby of Slavoj, through his disquieting indifference as to the demands of his bureaucratic function, produces the opening of a determined void, of a pure, positive place, at the heart of the Law itself, and which can therefore touch In the inherent fragility of any symbolic order as such. It is fundamentally a definite negation, or what Hegel understood by negation of negation. What is contained in the pure gesture of Bartleby, his incomprehensible would rather not, is rather the passage of a simple policy of resistance, or of contestation (a policy that, as we have seen, enjoys what it denies itself) for a political act properly: an act that opens a new space totally outside the hegemonic position and its simple negation. In this sense, we could imagine Bartleby responding to a series of proposals typical of our postmodern world. And if instead of the superficiality expressed in the enthusiasm of those who fight for a better world - but at the same time refuse to abdicate the symbolic enjoyment of that same world - if instead, we would say, like Bartleby, would prefer not to?

In this way, Bartleby operates the subtraction in all its purity, ´(...) the reduction of all qualitative differences to a minimum purely formal difference´ which causes all the sacred cows of the our ideological field. ´(...) Violence results from his being impassive, insistent, inert, immobile´ - and that is why his puerile smile is so unbearable.´

Otacílio is smiling over every second of those three forty-four minutes. But he´s not laughing ´at´ us; he invites us to smile - too - with him. So the duration of his ´sound´ Piece is perhaps the time of the smiles being fertilized and coming into existence, do you perceive? Simultaneously, nothing could be more violent now - to a series of proposals typical of our postmodern world - than silence. And more, the Melgacian silence ... as presented here.

And, at that point, it becomes strategically required bring John to the surface because this junction - between the specific works of Melville and Cage - is worthy of all exciting perplexity.

There´s another essay, written for the catalog of the exhibition ´John Cage and Experimental Art: The Anarchy of Silence´ at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. By the pianist and J.C. scholar: James Pritchett.

A fragment: ´So what are we to do with 4′33″? The piece, I think, can most usefully be seen as a tribute to the experience of silence, a reminder of its existence and its importance for all of us. But the piece is flawed, however, in that it may suggest that silence is something that can be presented to us by someone else. Ultimately, the experience of silence is not something that can be communicated from one person to another. It cannot be forced into existence externally, and we cannot willfully make it happen. ´We are made perfect by what happens to us rather than by what we do,´ as Cage quoted Meister Eckhart. Attending a performance of 4′33″ is not an activity that by itself is likely to trigger such an encounter, even if we strongly desire it to do so.

Instead, we have to do the work of facing silence ourselves, just as Cage did in the 1940s and 50s, or at the very least to simply notice it when it appears. The most helpful role for 4′33″ is to inspire silence. It can remind us that it is up to us to turn our minds towards the silence, to recognize it as we encounter it, even if only for a moment. The silence that Cage spoke of is something that is accessible to each and every person at any time. We cannot help it from happening: moments of that deep silence appear for us spontaneously (if briefly, perhaps) for various reasons. You can see this yourself if you reflect over your experience and look for such moments. (...) When we touch the silence in moments such as these, we experience that same moment in which silence taught John Cage how to compose.´

´Bartleby, through the windows ... looking out of the office where he was rooted, saw a wall. A gray wall. Only that. Greyish. Neither white nor black but ashy, ashen, grizzly, grizzled, cinereous wall. One and another brick on the wall, the Bartleby's look is ours. Hoary wall. Like the one I put on the cover of the Single. There I added some words and numbers, like an almost invisible graffiti. Invisible. But inaudible? Ars est celare artem. I preferred Bartleby because Bartleby preferred the uncaged Silence.´ (O.M.)

So what are we to do now with 3′44″?

Melgaço inverts the order of numbers and time. Does it create a mirror (in reflexivity) or a denial (in reversibility)? This supposed detail (impossible to go unnoticed), for me, corrects the above mentioned fault. We have to do the work of facing silence ourselves. The insertion of a voice in the last seconds (symbolizing that, more than ever, we should be the Subject of it), it´s the proof, I have no doubt. Part of what Cage was looking for was not silence by itself. His goal was all the sounds, noises etc that would arise in the physical space in which his creation was being presented. Melgaço, differently, turns totally to the inner silence, an anechoic chamber: this uterinity. Yes, we have to do the work of facing silence ourselves ... and, I add, this seems to me much more necessary now, in the first decades of the twenty-first century than at the time when Cage created and propagated it. Yes, what I write is unsettling and must be. But it´s an invitation, a revivification - in its (in principle, endogenously) revolutionary sense.

In short, the intersection made by O.M. (and of which he also becomes part) between Bartleby and 4'33'' through I Would Prefer Not To or 3′44″, establishes a deafening web that now gains violent interlacings as sticky silks for trapping the present days. Which is still poetic, too. Hear these sounds of silence; that's what you'll find there now, and that's what we all need." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Bartleby the Scrivener explores the theme of isolation in American life and the workplace through actual physical loneliness and mental loneliness. Although all of the characters at the office are related by being co-workers, Bartleby is the only one whose name is known to us and seems serious, as the rest of characters have odd nicknames, such as "Nippers" or "Turkey", this excludes him from being normal in the workplace. Bartleby's former job was at the "Dead Letter Office" that received mail with nowhere to go, representing the isolation of communication that Bartleby had at both places of work, being that he was given a separate work area for himself at the lawyer's office. Bartleby never leaves the office, but repeats what he does all day long, copying, staring, and repeating his famous words of "I would prefer not to", leading readers to have another image of the repetition that leads to isolation on Wall Street and the American workplace.

Rebellion and rejection are also expressed themes in this story. Bartleby refuses to conform to the normal ways of the people around him and instead, simply just doesn't complete his tasks requested by his boss. He does not make any request for changes in the workplace, but just continues to be passive to the work happening around him. Just as public rejects changes from a normal routine, this rebellious style by Bartleby causes his co-workers to reject him as he is not behaving the same as the rest of the work place environment. The narrator tries multiple tactics to get Bartleby to conform to the standards of the workplace, and ultimately realizes that Bartleby's mental state is not that of normal society. Although the narrator sees Bartleby as a harmless person, the narrator refuses to engage in the same peculiar rhythm that Bartleby is stuck in;

II - Various philosophical influences can be found in "Bartleby the Scrivener". The story alludes to Jonathan Edwards's "Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will"; and Jay Leyda, in his introduction to The Complete Stories of Herman Melville, comments on the similarities between Bartleby and The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity by Joseph Priestley. Both Edwards and Priestley wrote about free will and determinism. Edwards states that free will requires the will to be isolated from the moment of decision. Bartleby's isolation from the world allows him to be completely free. He has the ability to do whatever he pleases. The reference to Priestley and Edwards in connection with determinism may suggest that Bartleby's exceptional exercise of his personal will, even though it leads to his death, spares him from an externally determined fate.

"Bartleby" is also seen as an inquiry into ethics. Critic John Matteson sees the story (and other Melville works) as explorations of the changing meaning of 19th-century "prudence". The story's narrator "struggles to decide whether his ethics will be governed by worldly prudence or Christian agape". He wants to be humane, as shown by his accommodations of the four staff and especially of Bartleby, but this conflicts with the newer, pragmatic and economically based notion of prudence supported by changing legal theory. The 1850 case Brown v. Kendall, three years before the story's publication, was important in establishing the "reasonable man" standard in the United States, and emphasized the positive action required to avoid negligence. Bartleby's passivity has no place in a legal and economic system that increasingly sides with the "reasonable" and economically active individual. His fate, an innocent decline into unemployment, prison and starvation, dramatizes the effect of the new prudence on the economically inactive members of society;

III - The first time Cage mentioned the idea of a piece composed entirely of silence was during a 1947 (or 1948) lecture at Vassar College, A Composer's Confessions. Cage told the audience that he had "several new desires", one of which was

to compose a piece of uninterrupted silence and sell it to Muzak Co. It will be three or four-and-a-half minutes long—those being the standard lengths of "canned" music and its title will be Silent Prayer. It will open with a single idea which I will attempt to make as seductive as the color and shape and fragrance of a flower. The ending will approach imperceptibility;

IV - Compositions that, like 4′33″, include no sounds produced by the performer, were conceived by a number of composers and writers before Cage. Examples include the following:

Alphonse Allais's 1897 Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man, consisting of twenty-four blank measures. Allais was an associate of Erik Satie, and given Cage's profound admiration for Satie, it is possible that Cage was inspired by the Funeral March. When asked Cage claimed he was unaware of Allais's composition at the time.

In Gaston Leroux's 1903 novel La Double Vie de Théophraste Longuet, silent concerts are given by the Talpa people.

Erwin Schulhoff's 1919 "In futurum", a movement from the Fünf Pittoresken for piano. The Czech composer's meticulously notated composition is made up entirely of rests.

In Harold Acton's 1928 book Cornelian a musician conducts "performances consisting largely of silence".

In 1947, jazz musician Dave Tough joked that he was writing a play in which "A string quartet is playing the most advanced music ever written. It's made up entirely of rests. [...] Suddenly, the viola man jumps up in a rage and shakes his bow at the first violin. 'Lout,' he screams, 'you played that last measure wrong.'"

Yves Klein's 1949 Monotone-Silence Symphony (informally The Monotone Symphony, conceived 1947–48), an orchestral forty-minute piece whose second and last movement is a twenty-minute silence (the first movement being an unvarying twenty minute drone).

The musicologist Richard Taruskin has argued that 4′33″ is an example of automatism. Since the Romantic Era composers have been striving to produce music that could be separated from any social connections, transcending the boundaries of time and space. In automatism, composers wish to completely remove both the composers and the artist from the process of creation. This is motivated by the belief that what we think of as "self-expression" is really just an infusion of the art with the social standards that we have been subjected to since birth. Therefore, the only way to achieve truth is to remove the artist from the process of creation. Cage achieves that by employing chance (e.g., use of the I Ching, or tossing coins) to make compositional decisions. In 4′33″, neither artist nor composer has any impact on the piece, so that Cage has no way of controlling what ambient sounds will be heard by the audience.

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.