Originally appeared in Joan Retallack, Errata 5uite (Washington D.C.: Edge Books, 1993). 
First performance as Varications I for John Cage: Two voices, motion sensitive microphones, wall installation of 
errata staves. NYC: Guggenheim Soho, 1994. 

379

Current Musicology, No. 95 (Spring 2013) © 2013 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York

from Errata 5uite

Joan Retallack

We talk about and try to think through these notions—like  
sounds in music—and we forget what really happens. We 
forget that we must always return to zero in order to pass 
from one word to the next.

John Cage, For the Birds

Errata 5uite. errant phrase denoting a suc
cession of 5 line errata slips of tongue
composed of letter notes written on 5 line
musical staves (invisible) together form
ing a silent suite (Fr. a following)

           

read for for fore tu (large bird) errorious to be in motion o tu cara scienzia 
mia musica varied as were mixup agitatur not known the man could not 
swim and Now apostrophe s restored to pronounce the ritual formula 
punch in code for teeth  (love ’s savage splendor) read land and math for 
lang and myth   ’s urgent isosceles smile 

read note on figs (body / rouge / mind / noire) for what reply does one 
make oil dependence as a form of music for Gesamptkunstwerk read 
Gesamtkunstwerk poetic verb for word this troubled devotion ewhich I 
had not (67-73) been singing whole moving fast almost motionless simplicity 
of for (seen) faces whose coordinates are

read Luck upon time past Th’extravagant ‘n erring T’Errortorio O (La 
cantatrice chèvre) the words once chief fig now obs quasi-trans cog object 
to variant Germanic*res ras rushing medias race/mess Words’words 
streaming firth in fifths ers-a-to wander in causal debt errabund erroarious 
(produces sneezing) rerum, tears  to zero



Current Musicology

380

readafresh another Roman tic o postromodern time ‘n life a fresh ‘n new 
new fresh ‘n ergo blubber to this add read moist reeds should read musics 
AURORA5 & EROTEMA’s hethinks it wasn’t German (Russian Serb 
Khmer... per se’s apostrophe’s tragik musico philosophicus esophagus or 
5th wheel’s cranial nerve in errant interval estate 

read hail o reads too close sesame leek feet (but not in the music) grosteste 
or pseudo-grostextuality the best is no music Mozart replide nicked 
vectors purpledicular alone alone unknown lone  dis ordered fragments 
read erratic demon stranded p.5 on what sad eyes caress they cannot touch 
or hold or even to appear to interpret this as dawn 

i.e. to read o tu cara silènzio mia musica for late orts cracks figmenst 
dis coarse on terror incognita tort thud slipova girl light as 7 pt italic in 
which she only she appeared to know that he had asses ears (coughs in 
shrubbery) proverbial never no fortuitous timing the classical reference 
achieves the force of logic and yet but for theorem read either c or d

read the giant transcendental (-ed up up and away) frown corrects the 
pagination this inter rhetoric is eating out my heaort reads the for every 
bauhaus dasein I sing choiristica’s bvent wood rocjer 5uite our peridoncal 
nite reade this liouminouscene ovsession rhubarbed re mark flesh with 
snakes/or/snacks in roots of speech no single act can find the music in