What
this Blog is about:
This is
a blog on John Cage writings. It is arranged to commemorate the centennial of
his birth on September 5th, 2012. I have chosen one or two texts for
each Monday starting on September 5th 2011, and ending, a year from Monday,
on September 5th, 2012 (in reference, conveniently, to the title of Cage’s
second book of collected writings, A Year
From Monday, 1967). This blog is at times a scholarly investigation of a
particular text as it relates to my research, and at others merely a rumination
on the implications (rather than meaning or interpretation) of the chosen text
in a given week. In keeping with Cage’s own diligent work schedule, I have set
up a number of goals and restrictions that will ensure that the blog is
consistently following the idea of “reading through.” By this I mean reading
the given text and following through the usual exegesis of insights and implications,
but also as a means of imposing a discipline upon myself both academically and
creatively, creating, in a certain sense, a type of “disciplined action”
befitting of the subject matter.
A
little about myself: I am a PhD candidate in Historical Musicology at the University
of Southern California, completing my dissertation on John Cage and
experimental film. For the past four years, Cage’s work and thoughts have been
at the center of my attention, but with the usual distractions of graduate student
life in the humanities. Teaching duties, coursework, and general academic life
can often lead to periods of intellectual malaise. However, during the
2011-2012 academic year, I have finally been able to remove many of the usual
academic pressures - for a brief time at least - with a dissertation completion
fellowship. Blogging is an excellent means of practicing writing, getting in
touch with a larger audience, and to an extent, avoiding dissertation work.
But,
as Cage would remind us: “Permission Granted. But not to do whatever you want.”
Thus
this blog is not entirely altruistic - it is a way for me to both return to the
writings of Cage and to impose a very Cagean discipline on my day-to-day
activities. I have set several goals and expectations for the blog, the most
important being a new post on every Monday during the Cage centenary year. The
core “repertoire,” if you will, is the collection of six published writing
collections from Wesleyan University Press, which I will read through more or
less chronologically. This includes Silence
(1961), A Year From Monday (1967), M (1973), Empty
Words (1981), X (1983), Anarchy (1998),
and culminating with the monumental Charles Eliot Norton Lecture, I-VI MethodStructureIntentionDisciplineNotationIndeterminacyInterpenetrationImitationDevotionCircumstancesVariableStructureNonunderstandingContingencyInconsistencyPerformance
(1990 – published by Harvard University Press). The supplemental literature
includes the two collections edited by Richard Kostelanetz, John Cage; An Anthology (Da Capo, 1970 –
my copy of which, like everyone else’s almost immediately started to fall
apart, leading to a very Cagean disorganization of the first 20 or so pages),
and John Cage: Writer (Limelight, 1993),
along with a few selections from the extensive series of interview
compilations.
I may
choose to include notes from my experience with the various archival sources I
have explored in the past few years, (the massive Northwestern University
correspondence, The David Tudor papers at the Getty Research Institute, tidbits
from Laura Kuhn at the John Cage Trust, and most importantly, notes I have
taken on the manuscript collection at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT),
in conjunction with academic and nonacademic ruminations that may be of
interest. Finally, there are the primary sources for Cage’s writings that will
certainly come into play: The I-Ching, or
Book of Changes, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Walden, The Perennial Philosophy,
The Transformation of Nature in Art, The Integration of the Personality,
and many others that were integral to Cage’s philosophy. I certainly do not
intend to cover all of this material in a year, but I do plan on devoting a
specific amount of time to these sources as I review the core Cage texts.
Again,
this blog hovers in the gray area between formal academic study and informal
rumination in the blogosphere. My one hope, if nothing else, is that the
information put out here is clear and accurate, and will give fans of John Cage
some additional insight into his life and career that is otherwise hidden
behind the veil of intellectual jargon and university library privileges. I hold no restrictions on the comments page,
and I hope that anyone that does come across this project will engage my thoughts
and opinions and, in the likely event, correct the occasional error.
Along
with the concept of reading through, I will admittedly defer to some of the
standard academic criticisms and interpretations of Cage’s writings, primarily
those of David Patterson and Marjorie Perloff. To explain this in brief, there
is a growing field of academic criticism focusing on Cage’s writings,
especially as it concerns the construction of a persona, the cultural image of
Cage as a person and his implicit participation in the creation of this
construct. Digging through Cage’s life and letters, this observation could not be
more obvious; to anyone who follows popular music, this is almost a nonissue at
this point. The notion of a persona construct has become so deeply imbedded in
commercialism that the tension between “selling out” and authenticity is the actual product, and nothing more.
In
a sense, such criticism is a natural progression in the academic study of an
individual, usually beginning with scholars like myself one generation removed
from personal contact with Cage and his circle. Identity construction is to me,
coming from a family of therapists, a fascinating element of textual criticism,
but at the same time (and again to keep it simple), this is part of what
writing is all about. Autobiography, cultural and social, socioeconomic, and
even racial, gender and identity are all part of the general construct
surrounding an idea of time, place and existence. I feel that not only was Cage
very aware of this in his writings, he indirectly sought out answers to some of
these ontological questions (questions of the limits of knowledge and
existence) in the aesthetic of silence, adding an element of circularity to the
very act of criticism and interpretation. This may seem a bit confusing (or
even circular itself) at this point, but again I hope that this parallel level
of criticism, interpretation, and exegesis will result from the disciplined act
of reading through.
It
would be silly to think that I can even make a dent in Cage’s writings in just
one year, a few hours each Monday, but that is not really the point. To take
this just one step further, this blog in itself is its own cultural
construction, biased by my age, gender, race, occupation education etc., and
although I attempt at all times to maintain an academic rigor to the words that
come off the page, my personal biases and preference are forever creeping into
the margins, at times marking whole pages or thoughts with naiveté, brilliance, hagiography, colloquialism, etc., and that is, hopefully, what will make this interesting:
if you read through my reading through, perhaps you will detect a persona. Then
again, perhaps not. These are philosophical and critical questions that
fascinated Cage, and fascinate me, and they are part of what this project is
about. I recall often the Suzuki anecdote in Silence, where, after a long post-dinner discussion on metaphysics,
Cage recalled:
About eleven o’clock we were
out on the street walking along, and an American lady said, “How is it, Dr.
Suzuki? We spend the evening asking you questions and nothing is decided.” Dr.
Suzuki smiled and said, “That’s why I love philosophy: no one wins.”
As
John Adams recently put it, “Cage Studies” is by now a cottage industry, and I
hope this contribution to the ever-expanding network of thoughts and
ruminations will help to enliven the debate in the Cage centenary year,
reminding us of the lasting impact of these texts, and inspiring us to return
again to a figure that has never quite left the public eye. I have also
included a Cage 2012 page for posting any interesting events that I come across
in the next year, from concerts to exhibitions or anything else Cage-related,
along with a “book review” page that gives a brief overview of the main books
on or by Cage. Finally, for those interested, I’ll go ahead and toss the coins
each week and post the reading in the heading. I am not one for deep
interpretation of divination texts, but it does add an interesting level of
meaning to the weekly post.
To
recap the story surrounding a year from Monday:
…it was a Saturday; there were
six of us having dinner in a restaurant on the Hudson north of Newburgh; we
arranged to meet in Mexico…in order to realize this rendezvous, all of us
(knowing how to say Yes) will have to learn to say No – No, that is, to
anything that may come between us and the realization of our plan.
To the
students in the school from which we’ll never graduate,
Richard
Brown
Los
Angeles, California
September
5th, 2011
