PROLOGUE
Listen, my friends, when I leave you like this and must go home on foot, it is towards dawn I come to Arcueil.  When I pass through the woods, the birds beginning to sing, I see an old tree, its leaves rustling, I go near, I put my arms around it and think, What a wonderful character, never to have harmed anyone.

--Erik Satie, quoted by John Cage in his book "Silence," 1962