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Slowly but surely By Doron Rosenblum In the medieval St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt, Germany, the longest and slowest concert of all time is going on. Two months ago, one more note of the avant-garde American composer John Cage's work "Organ2/ASLSP" (the second part of the name means "As Slow as Possible") was sounded. The work, whose name is taken from Cage's instructions on how it should be performed, was written in 1985 as an act of protest against the modern conception of time. The notes in the original version for piano cover just eight pages, but each one can be played with almost interminable slowness. But how slow can "As Slow as Possible" possibly be? Following Cage's death in 1992, a group of musicologists and philosophers from all over the world gathered to discuss this question, and decided that the work would take 639 years to perform. This is "about as long as an organ can sound, and make sounds, or just remain upright," says Prof. Hans Ola-Ericsson, a Swedish organ expert. This also happens to be the age of the old organ in Halberstadt, but for the sake of a successful performance of the work, a new organ was built there. Advertisement In order to stretch out a work that could be played in 20 minutes over 639 years, each sound must last for two or three years. And since the work cannot have a human performer, lead weights are used. Moved every few years, they serve as a substitute for the organist's fingers and feet. The performance of the work began in September 2001, with a pause lasting until February 5, 2003. The first chord was played from then until July 5, 2005. Two months ago, as noted, the sixth chord was added. According to various calculations, the final note of "As Slow as Possible" will first be heard on September 5, 2640. (According to news reports and Internet sites, the current sound of the work may be heard and seen at www.john-cage.halberstadt.de/new/index.php?l=e) The works on Ibn Gvirol Street and the surrounding area in Tel Aviv were supposed have been finished some time ago, but, of course, there were some unforeseen-delays-that-weren't-taken-into-account-at-the-start. First - as usual - came our old friends, the big yellow bulldozers: the aperitif, the appetizer, the lead-in to any long-playing destruction (better known in these parts by the pet names of "renovations" or "construction") whose end is anyone's guess. With a typical burst of initial energy - the kind whose start has nothing to do with its continuation - these yellow machines charged at the curbs, chomped at the trees, the traffic islands, the asphalt, the benches, the pavements. At the end of the initial energetic and promising day, left behind were rubble, jagged hunks of concrete and long mounds of gravel with exclamation point-shaped trails of dust floating above them. "It's not so bad," said the residents. "Another 70-80 days, folks, and the nightmare will be over. By the time of our city's centennial or bicentennial celebrations, we'll have a beautiful new boulevard. Just look: One day already went by like nothing." And there was evening and there was morning - the first day. But the next day, the contractor and his workers didn't show up. Only the trails of dust still curled in the air, this time in the form of question marks inside parentheses. Evidently, it was the holy-day-of-the-Jewish-Diaspora, or Isru Hag or some such, because no work was done the next day, either. Not until a week later did the bulldozers return to rumble and screech and chomp and dig; and not halfheartedly, either, but round the clock. And with what gusto! What diligence! Probably only the assembly lines for the Spitfire and Lancaster planes during World War II ever rivaled their killer pace. And their output was indeed impressive: Within three or four days, three or four kilometers of the street were transformed into the Dresden of the Middle East. And then the contractor and his workers stopped coming. A month passed. Two months crept by. In the spring, they returned, with the screeching and the rumbling and the dust, and the bright vests of the workers seeming to wander around the cratered street in a daze, night and day, shouting to one another: "Ahhh?!" "Ahhhh?!!" and dashing about on these dastardly, deafeningly loud little tractors, while jolly birds of spring were chirping above in sunrises and sunsets - for spring had come now, remember? "It's not so bad," said the patient residents - gingerly picking their way among the mountains of rubble, tossing and turning at night as the chirps and beeps of the machines drilled into their brains and particles of dust choked their mouths: "Did Lawrence of Arabia have better living conditions? And what about all those who endured the Hundred Years' War?" The spring holidays came and went. The first rains fell on the project. In the month of Tishrei the palm tree produced a nice dark fruit: a stretch of road began to be paved, and a new sidewalk began to peek out of the chaos. But then the fall holidays arrived. And there was a war - one of those that are invented in these parts just for the sake of delaying the completion of construction projects. And then the contractor and his workers stopped coming. One fine night they suddenly returned with the big bulldozers from the beginning and with some medium-size bulldozers and the giant front-loaders - all the same yellow, beeping and crunching and blaring - and began plowing up and scraping away the lone stretch of street that they had already paved. And after they re-scraped the street that had already been scraped twice - the tar spreaders came one night and paved it for the second or third time. And the next day, the diggers came and reopened the trenches of the sewer pipes. And the bright vests were now being worn by new workers who had been born in the meantime to the old workers who by this time had died at a ripe old age, and now they, too - the second or third generation to be a part of this dig - came and re-dug up the street with the small, chirping bulldozers - "until the ends of sorrow/ until the end of night/in streets empty and long." Another year passed. Another first rain drizzled. Another last rain poured. The last of the generation were privileged to see half of the street paved and planted, but in the time it took to start sprucing up the dragon's head, the tail already went bad: By the time the plunderers turned their attention to the northern end of the street, the "completed" southern end was showing some signs of aging: The paving stones had grown discolored and crooked, the grass thinned out, the renewal feeling expired. "A little patience ... it'll be worth the wait," a senior engineer assured the merchants of Jerusalem's Jaffa Road, which has recently been turned into an 18th-century donkey path in order to make way for the 21st-century light rail system. But the merchants were not assuaged: They apparently guessed what's in store for them. For in our parts, new streets take off slowly. Just how slowly? The airlines call it "To Be Announced." Because around here everything goes so slowly - "As Slow as Possible": road works, renovations, diplomatic negotiations, the freeing of captives, the solution of mysteries, conflict resolution, legal inquiries, remedying of injustices, implementation of committee findings, the proceedings of those committees, the filing of indictments, the examination of fundamental problems, repayment of debts, implementation of changes, outlining policies - everything. What's another year or two to us? Or another two thousand years? In other places, the future is perceived as a sure and inevitable development toward which it is possible to take action in the present. Only here is time perceived as an enemy standing at the gate, and the future - as a potential catastrophe. Against them, a rearguard battle is waged: to somehow defend all that has been accumulated, to just be grateful that there's anything at all, to try somehow to delay, to linger, to stall just a little longer - For who knows what will happen when we start to move forward: Perhaps we will reach the end more quickly? N.B.: Around here, there is one exception to the slowness rule: the lightning speed with which the high-rises of the wealthy shoot up like an irreversible sudden erection: 20 stories in two weeks - and there goes the skyline. Because one thing is certain: No one is as industrious as we are when the situation is truly urgent. Bookmark to del.icio.us   'I didn't kill Rose' Rose's mother, grandfather request court delay autopsy of body found in Yarkon River. Israeli requests Israel asks U.S. for arms and permission to use an air corridor to attack Iran.

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