It was, as I remember, through Jean [Erdman} - who is to dancing what Vivaldi was to music - that we met the other member of the party, composer John Cage, who had then become interested in the relationship of music to Zen and was beginning to explore the melodies of silence. My principal tie with John was that we had the same kind of humour, for he would simply bubble with laughter whenever describing his latest plans for musical outrage, such as a very formal piano recital in full evening dress, complete with an assistant to turn the pages, in which, however, the score consisted entirely of rests. The joke wasn't merely that he was getting away with murder in the hopelessly deranged world of avant-garde music, so as to constitute the master charlatan of all, but that beyond all this and to make matters still funnier, he had also discovered and wanted to share the meditation process of listening to silence. This is simply to close your eyes and allow your ears to resonate with wh...
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http://home.snafu.de/djwolf/vitae.htm#Bio
I endorse DJW's comment re the Peter Principle. It is, in fact, proven countless times every day, in every field of endeavour there is. The problem is that the PP was so obviously fitting for jokes on talk shows and in comedy acts, that the very true and serious nature of it was never really taken seriously when it was first published and hasn't been since other than by a few.