Subway Piece

from Subway Piece by The Digger Choir

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about

Recorded live at Issue Project Room 2003. The Digger Choir was every person who attended the concert; they are the performers of the piece.
The instructions to them were: Bring a piece of reading material you've had with you on the subway--newspaper, magazine, book, anything--and a read a passage from it out loud. It would preferably be a passage you had already read to yourself on a subway ride, but not necessarily. You can alternatively write down ad copy from advertisements you see in the subway and read that aloud. These readings will all take place simultaneously--no one will be reading their piece in front of everybody else, we'll all be reading together at the same time. I will conduct the piece and cue the beginning and ending.

This was originally an idea for a video piece, which would open with a shot of people in a subway car, and one by one they would start either reading aloud from what they were reading or reading the subway ads aloud or simply thinking out loud. Now, it’s not my fantasy that every time I walk into a subway car it would be a din of people talking—I think that would be a nightmare. The point of the piece is that the only way people’s thinking changes, and society changes, is by expressing your thoughts verbally. The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, et. al. came about because people thought something was wrong and then started saying something was wrong—and then started doing something about it. And love only happens when two people tell each other what they’re really thinking and feeling about each other. We’re taught to read silently most of the time, and we’re taught not to verbally express every thought that comes into our head—which becomes a matter of survival in terms of the interpersonal politics of our society. And of course our thoughts are our private property. But both the 17th and 20th century Diggers opposed private property and encouraged sharing of resources. So in that spirit I asked everyone to read or think out loud as a controlled experiment.--Alan Licht

credits

from Subway Piece, released June 25, 2020
Recorded by Janene Higgins; mixed by Alan Licht

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Alan Licht New York, New York

Guitarist from Love Child, the Blue Humans, Run On, Text of Light, Lee Ranaldo & the Dust

www.alanlicht.com
alanlicht.tumblr.com

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