Piano at Pleasant Green Methodist Episcopal Church

There is a beautiful old Colonial revival home in the Mississippi Delta that sits atop a Native American ceremonial mound. Mont Helena is the name of the home, and its story is magnificent. I won’t recount it here. There is plenty of information online if you want to learn more. Perhaps I’ll post a photo of the home soon - I spent an amazing night there once and had a beautiful encounter with Helen, the home’s namesake who spent her last days in an upstairs bedroom. But this essay is not about that home, it is about melody.

I made this photo sometime around 2008. This old piano was in the Pleasant Green Methodist Episcopal Church, which sat in the field next to the mound that held Mont Helena on top and generations of indigenous heritage inside. The church is no longer there. It sat empty and unattended for years, and in 2015 the land reclaimed the space.

But this writing is not about Mont Helena, Pleasant Green Methodist Episcopal Church, the Yazoo tribe that first inhabited the land, or the four thousand people living in the surrounding county. This writing is about John Cage. Or, more specifically, its about four-and-half minutes of rhythm crafted by Cage.

4’33” is a musical composition written by Cage in 1952 for any instrument or combination of instruments. The score instructs the musician(s) NOT to play their instrument(s) for the entire duration of the piece. What ensues is not silence, but the sounds of discomfort that inevitably ensue from the audience. It is a performance about pleasure and discomfort and how the two exist simultaneously. It also highlights the fact that unfulfilled expectations often lead to discomfort while unexpected inventiveness often leads to delight. Each member of the audience gets to decide which of the two approaches to take.

To me, that’s what art is all about - taking known elements and finding ways to present them in unique ways. Imagine what our world could be if we decided to make that type of thinking a priority, and therefore made that type of training a non-negotiable. It has been scientifically proven that repetition breeds complacency. Isn’t it time we adjust our expectations?