My Quirky Find: Musician Erik Satie

French composer Erik Satie (1866 –1925) founded the minimalist avant-garde movement that included Claude Debussy, with whom he publicly feuded over which had influenced the other. As a musician—Satie preferred being called a “phonometrician” (a measurer of sounds)—he had a direct influence on Maurice Ravel, one of his students, Olivier Messiaen, and John Cage. Satie is well-known not only for his quirky compositions, but also for his personal eccentrics.
He once composed a piece so radical that it caused a riot outside the concert hall. He was arrested and jailed for eight days for promoting “cultural anarchy”. 
Satie is often cited as the inventor of “background music” for a piece composed where the audience members were encouraged to speak to each other as they sat encircled by the musicians. When they refused to talk and instead wanted to listen to his music, he went into a rage and kicked everyone out.
Of his work, he stated that “musical ideas played no part whatsoever in their composition.” He predicted that would be the future of music shaped increasingly by “scientific” technology.
His quirkiness extended to his personal life. In his early days Satie preferred dressing in a black clerical cassock. Then in middle age his taste suddenly shifted. He purchased twelve identical gray suits, placed eleven in a closet and wore one until it became threadbare, at which time he would retrieve another from storage and wear until it, too, needed replacing. Six suits remained untouched at the time of his death.
He went to extraordinary lengths to bleach his food because he felt it unhealthy to eat anything with color. He walked looking backward over his shoulder for fear of being attacked, and he carried a hammer for protection against muggers. Instead of a pillow, his bed had a hole into which he could insert his head so blood could flow to his brain.
Satie lived in a tiny apartment described as a “wardrobe closet”. He refused for twenty-seven years to allow anyone to enter. When he died, it was a cluttered mess, filled with cobwebs and debris, including two pianos, one stacked atop the other due to lack of space, over 100 umbrellas, and countless scraps of paper with unusual drawings, expressions, and musical notations. 
On one scrap of paper he wrote “My name is Erik Satie, like everyone else” and another listed his daily routine: “I rise at 7:18; am inspired from 10:23 to 11:47. I lunch at 12:11 and leave the table at 12:14.”
Historians are divided on whether the musical genius had a mental illness or was just a big jokester mocking convention. Either way, he was certainly quirky.
If you are looking for a gift to celebrate the musical genius in your family, you can see what they think of a bed with a hole in it or, better yet, find the perfect handcrafted item here at Quirky Gifter!