The Selected Letters of John Cage. John Cage

just got the $100. It is apparently very slow arriving (probably not by air). I did get the Aix letters. Underlinings to answer your capitals.

      It is marvelous to see Maro here + it is only Mrs. Ajemian who is so unreasonable + money mad. I don’t see why she’s decided to take advantage of me.

      Tomorrow morning I will finish the instrumentation of the first movement + then in the evening there are fireworks again on the Seine to celebrate the Liberation.

      I am very happy but after 12 hours of trunks when I wanted to be composing I couldn’t help expressing my feelings.

      To Peggy Glanville-Hicks

       August 30, 1949 | Paris

      Dearest Peggy:

      I am so happy now. Maro is here and we often talk of you, and I have finished the first mvt. of a string quartet and the second mvt. is started and the 3rd and 4th envisaged in shape and feeling. Two ideas I found in Max Jacob²⁰⁸ and Guillaume Apollinaire²⁰⁹ served + serve to point the directions. “C’est par le silence que l’exterieur descendre en vous … Rien de bon ne sort que ou silence. Qui fera l’éloge ou silence?” and for the second mvt: “Ils vous entrâver ont tout vivants et éveillés dans le monde nocturne et fermé des songes.”²¹⁰ Thank God for the month of August which each year is so good. Max Ernst²¹¹ is here but I haven’t seen him yet. Merton Brown leaves next Tuesday for N.Y. + then to Vermont to recuperate from Europe. I am just as full of desire to be there as soon as possible—still no boats. I have a piano for only one more week + I am afraid it will be awful to wake up + not be able to continue working on the Quartet. But then people will be coming back + I can continue Satie-search + pay my respects to more composers. So far have ignored [Georges] Auric, Nigg and not seen enough of Sauguet, whom I like. And then of course more Boulez + maybe concerts in Belgium.

      To Peggy Glanville-Hicks

       [Shortly after August 30, 1949] | Paris

      Dearest Peggy,

      I miss your letters and hope one is about to arrive. Maro is langorously here (very devoted to N[otre-] D[ame] which she has not yet entered). I have finished 1st mvt. of Quartet and am pleased with it. Boulez has finished a Quartet (worked a year and ½ on it) which is going to nourish everybody for some time to come. I will one way or another bring it back with me. Billy [Masselos] must play his 2nd Sonata (and his 1st). Such marvelous music. I think it pushes to the frontier as far as our capacity to respond goes. Of course that capacity moves even as we sleep. In the face of his music I am somewhat in danger of Colin McPheeitis²¹² (giving in to exterior truth); my own ideas fortunately still take the form of straws to which I cling. How glorious it is, music, rising up any where any time strong as though new-born.

      In five days or so I will be again without piano + full sail in a sea of distractions. Andre Souris may arrange a concert in Brussels + I may play for radio here, etc.

      Maro leaves to take the London temperature sometime this week. Merce is mysteriously ill. Jack + Merton are déjàpartis. I f[oun]d a book all about music in the light of St. Augustine + dedicated to Arthur Lowrié (good friend of Varèse).

      To Peggy Glanville-Hicks

       [Undated, postmarked September 6, 1949] | Paris

      I find another reason why psychoanalysis is bad especially in America. Our problem there is construction (the need here is destruction,—nothing is vital here unless it destroys + psychoanalysis was discovered here as a way to destroy—further split apart). I have more to say is this direction, but it has begun to clear up in my thinking—the America-Europe problem (I am happier too). When we have difficulty understanding Europe it is because they need precisely the opposite of what we need. And I believe we are right because we are affirmative, whereas only negation works here. They keep expecting something from ashes, where we have only to plant to produce growth.

      I have two rules for overcoming neuroses. If with other people, be with them, rather than alone; if alone, be single and pointed + luminescent + not back of or in front of where you are. So many Americans are neurotic, but I understood the problem the other day when I met a very charming but neurotic Dutch girl. She had to be alone when with others, + I am sure when alone she couldn’t find the center. I am writing a String Quartet. If I don’t get back now it is all right; I feel strong again.

      I saw Nadia²¹³ but only for an instant. Please stay with us and don’t go away to India. Geeta arrives 15th of Sept. here. Saw Jolivet²¹⁴ twice.

      To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage

       September 19, 1949 | Paris

      Dearest Mother and Dad:

      Gita gave me some beautiful material but it turns out not for a suit but for some shirts. Yesterday we went to see some new paintings by Miro.²¹⁵ The day before we visited Auric the composer and he suggested another way to find some of Satie’s music that I have not yet found. Through Gita’s sister Geera, I met Max Bill, a Swiss painter + friend of Albers to whom I had written about concerts in Switzerland, but then lost interest in. The result now is that I may play in Zurich on the 15th of October shortly before sailing on the 22nd. Tomorrow I call the French radio about playing here.

      I have also begun picking up presents here and there. The more I think of the difficulties and expense of your fixing up the apartment before I get back the less it pleases me. It would be so easy for me to get to work on it when I get back. Did I tell you the Calder movie people telephoned me from N.Y. in the middle of the night recently?²¹⁶ And then sent a friend of theirs to see me here to make sure I’d write some music for them? I don’t know whether the Guggenheim Foundation will permit it. However, we’ll see.

      To Herbert Matter²¹⁷

       [Undated, postmarked September 27, 1949] | Paris

      Dear Herbert:

      Thank you for your very kind letter. My plans rather indicate sailing on the 22nd of October and arriving just before the first of November (Ile de France).

      A number of things make that seem right. I may play for the radio here, in Switzerland and in Brussels. Articles are being published in translation which I want to proof-read. I still have details in my work on Satie and young French composers to see people about, etc.

      If you can arrange to let me write the music when I return I imagine I can get the Guggenheim people to agree. Explain that after all the world continues. When there is now Autumn there is Winter and then Spring comes. And 10 yrs. later things appear to have been less exigent.

      I am glad to hear the film is in good shape and I am sure it wd. be a fantastic pleasure to work on it.

      To John Cage Sr. and Lucretia Cage

       October 5, 1949 | Paris

      Dearest Mother + Dad:

      An astonishing offer today to control all the sound + music of a large Marshall Plan²¹⁸ exhibition here (in the Grand Palais) in March. I would be able to collaborate with technicians to my heart’s content + be paid somewhere between $600 and $1000 for roughly 3 months’ work. I have not accepted it yet. It would mean staying here at least through March + possibly on thru the Spring. Also many other things which I forget in view of this large one such as articles in England, here, + Switzerland and also a painter wants to collaborate with me on a “project” he has in mind. And a poet on an opera. Etc. Etc. The Marshall Plan idea however interests me very much because I would have such problems as 5 movies shown at once in a single room (audience in middle) for which I suggested “space music,” sounds coming from different directions to make a single whole. Now that I think of it not at all different from what happens in a cathedral. But then the other problem—to make music for separate exhibitions that are on a path be individual + yet connected (like a melody) is marvelous. All my Fr[ench] friends want me to stay + do it. But as I say I have not decided. If I stayed I wd. have to arrange with the Guggenheim