How to watch an ICE concert

One, you can stare at the stage and smile as if amused.
Two, you can stare off into the distance, very serious, like you're waiting for something.

I love seeing the cocktail waitresses coming through in the middle of an elongated chanting sort of carefully timed primal moment on stage. "You all doin' okay?" The guy at the next table has a peach--no, I think it's an apricot tattooed above his elbow. The colors are so lush and vibrant, it looks like an oil painting. It's nice the way the musicians all all seemed to breathe together.

Three, you can poke your nose in a notebook and hope you don't look like you're pretending to be a music critic.

"I'd like to introduce you to a very old friend of..." "Shh!"

The woman next to the apricot guy looks like Mia Farrow. During the first piece John Cage's Credo inUS (David Bowlin on radio), the bandannaed waitress carried a tray of eight or so drinks. As she strode down the steps to a table during a quiet stretched out passage of music, I thought if she stumbles it will be a disaster. But she didn't, and it did that strengthen the piece? Or am I the only one who even thinks it's related? I mean, this is music where the very way someone turns a page may be written into the score. Or at least that's how it feels, so don't blame me if I don't know where the lines are.

Steve Reich up now. It's glorious. It was my mom who taught me to carry small notebooks in my purse. Not because she ever did, but because she's always buying things like little notebooks that I don't otherwise know what to do with.

Adam said this music is the only thing that makes him feel someone has taken the top of his head off. I wonder how you get hold of a tape for this piece. Is there a Samuel French of new music? I keep being drawn to World War One. I mean, this is from World War Two but that's not what I mean. Is there a best time to be born? Before the war, during the war, after? They're all just different forms of disillusionment or intentional allusion. If you are born into the lucky time, it's only lucky if you know it, and if you know it then you also have knowledge of the unlucky times, and knowing of them, how can you really enjoy your luck?

I'm my best when I can't see a thing. The smell of the candle going out reminds me of when bars used to be full of cigarette smoke. It was a moving presence through the air. Now there are only physical bodies. I know that Mary Queen of Scots screwed up big time, but I can't remember how. Ever has it been so.

In new music, unlike in musical comedy, the acts seem to get longer as they go on. The music pries your head open, little by little, then expects you, challenges you to leave it open so it can explore the real ideas that can only be explored in the open space. That's a little different than the big Climax song where it's all about resolving the I Want song. Or, dot dot dot, is it?