1942 America Speaks (The City Wears a Slouch Hat)

My dear Mrs. Cage,

I have tried to get you on the telephone but you were not in when I called, hence this note. We listened to the Cage-Patchen program on Sunday afternoon. To my regret there were interruptions during the duration, but I did manage to get a definite reaction. At first I was confused, but as the broadcast progressed I began to see light, and toward the end I grasped a superb climax. Am I right in this interpretation? A man who finds himself in a sordid, trivial, noisy, meaningless world, rejects it....

https://johncage.org/kuhns/1942-america-speaks-the-city-wears-a-slouch-hat

#JohnCage #KennethPatchen #Poetry #AvantGarde #AudioPlay #Music

The City Wears A Slouch Hat by John Cage - Kenneth Patchen, released in 2000 by Cortical Foundation (but recorded in 1942)

Zac writes on The John Cage Blog:

This 1942 work consists of percussion music to accompany the CBS radio play of the same title by Kenneth Patchen. The play concerns an unnamed fellow , who travels a city and encounters a number of characters, and listens in on patches of conversation...Guy seems to have assorted psychic powers, at one point answering a phone in a faraway apartment to tell the caller that the person they are trying to reach is dead along with his family, and making the bullets disappear from another gunman’s weapon...In the lengthy final scene, Guy waxes philosophical, calling for the need for more love in the world, and noting that he is going to “enter your house, hands outstretched” and that there is no need to be afraid.

https://cageblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/city-wears-slouch-hat.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82COs3cuLC8

#JohnCage #KennethPatchen #Music #AvantGarde #Poetry #AudioPlay

If you enjoyed the #KennethPatchen #artpoem #paintings I highly recommend hunting down a collection of his paintings called "What Shall We Do Without Us: The Voice And Vision of Kenneth Patchen" (hint: check out Library Genesis).

Every man is me,
I am his brother.
No man is my enemy.
I am Everyman
and he is in and of me.
This is my faith,
my strength,
my deepest hope,
and my only belief.

Take a look at his book: "The Journal of Albion Moonlight" https://archive.org/details/journalofalbionm00patc

#poetry #beatnik