What are you listening to?

Two moody songs from Depeche Mode. Very fitting for our uncertain times. Taken from the album Spirit from 2017. Upon first hearing them they can seem to be dark romantic songs, but they are from a very political album so I kinda enjoy that thematic ambiguity.


 

Erik Satie "Vexations" 1893 (Excerpt)
Recently I was in Paris listening to "vexations" under the circumstances I decided to write something that I would now like to share.

What sense does it make when something simple is repeated for so long?
Of this work "vexations" Cage comments: "Listening to this composition clears, sharpens the attention; in such a way that the slightest deviation from what it was is clear. It is as if the faculty of listening is sharpened".

Vexations is a story of love and rupture in which Satie seeks the catharsis that dwells in the time-tempo of repetition where sustained effort and the annulment of the ego contribute to unblocking perception something close to disposing of the will in stalking or recapitulation. Thus fighting against the vexations to which memory subjects us.

In N.Y. in 1963, after 18 hours and 40 minutes after the premiere of the piece, Cage expresses his sensations: "When I woke up, I felt completely different. And, moreover, what I saw outside was unfamiliar to me, even if it was where I lived. In other words, I had changed and the world had changed: that's what I wanted to say. And I was not the only one, but the others who had participated wrote or phoned me and told me that the same thing had happened to them".

If we think that stories or something repeats itself it is because we do not pay attention to all the details, the repetition becomes an opportunity to sharpen the ear to the faculty of unveiling the truth and to be transformed by that repetition, who knows if in Monotonous or chromatic beings.
 
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