Everyone should experience the totality of a solar eclipse at least once because it is FREE. The Sun never complains about copyright infringement. And yet, it performs such a fantastic show without a fee.
Birds chirping, trees rustling, all sounds faded as if absorbed by the darkness, and it began. The panoramic totality view was extraordinary and eccentric rather than impressive. This celestial cataclysm gave the ancients a bizarre experience and gave rise to many myths and folklore worldwide.
And again, this spectacular shade show is copyright-free, while many more things on earth are being trademarked daily.
American experimental composer John Cage once published a piece called 4’33” in 1952. It is composed of three movements, and Cage’s sole instruction to the performers was “tacet” (Latin: [it] is silent) in each one. So, it is a quiet “4 minutes and 33 seconds” piece.
In 2002, British composer/arranger Mike Batt was accused of plagiarism for the song “A One Minute Silence” and of infringing John Cage’s copyright for including Cage as co-composer. Batt ended up paying an undisclosed six-figure sum to the John Cage Trust. Today, even silence is a trademarked work. Taylor’s Track 3 is just gossip, to be sure.
What is strictly copyright? What exactly does it do to us? It’s high time creators thought about it.
The last non-authoritative objects left to humankind may be natural light and sound. An experience from them, such as a total solar eclipse, is the only greater reality that info media can’t wrap or warp with the secondary reality they create.
Upon such a copyright-free experience, human beings can break through virtual reality because it is always something to which all the genes in each cell respond.
Man taints a chaotic world, and the chaos is merely the human impression. The entire universe is composed of harmony and order. The moment the diamond ring started to light up the sky again, my genetic pulse subsided in relief.
