MUSICAGE. John Cage

the weather report on the radio, because the news on WINS, this lullaby, the lullaby is intolerable because of the children who are murdered one way or another, or who themselves murder their parents, and that kind of news is what we get every day. I find it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help—I’ll avoid the word “culture” now (laughs)—it doesn’t help my work. Or it doesn’t help in the use of the hours of the day.

      JR: Actually, I’m curious about whether your anarchism—which is basically what—

      JC: Spirits me.

      JR: —You’re articulating: whether it’s some sort of optimistic fatalism with a long view.

      JC: (laughs) Some Pollyannaish …

      JR: No, “p-o-l-y” perhaps; not “Anna.” But it seems to me that it possibly does entail a long view. As you say, any time you turn on the radio or look at the papers, a good deal of the information is horrifying.

      JC: Yes. All those details are intolerable. You can’t live with it. If your attention were constantly on immediate problems—like the Gulf crisis, for instance—I think you’d have to give up. I mean, what could you possibly do? Nothing that you or I can do now will change any of that. Much less effective are we than say that butterfly in China³ who will determine it, probably. (laughter)

      JR: But of course that could be an argument in defense of political activism. You could say, well, if even a Chinese butterfly can affect the weather in New York, then—

      JC: Then how much better if we would do something activist? Oh, I see. Well, I think that my strongest action, in terms of either immediate time or long-term time, hmm? is what I’m doing. Hmm? I can’t do any better than I’m doing. And I think that’s true of each person who is concentrated on his or her work. Just the example of one’s work, and one’s dedication to it, is … is … I don’t know what to say about it, but that’s what we’re doing. And we’re doing our utmost. I don’t think if we made it directed more to the person in the street, hmm? that it would be our work. What’s involved is the people in the street changing their focus of attention, and we can’t force them to change it, something else has to do that. Circumstances have to do that. And they will! Hmm?

      JR: Where does that last come from—“and they will”?

      JC: You see, we may always get an impression that the masses are inert, or uninspired and so forth. But every now and then some of them will become inspired. And others who are not inspired will take their place. (pause) So … there might be a continuing stupidity just as there’s a continuing enlightenment! (laughs)

      JR: It seems one view that could come of that is who are we to—

      JC: To distinguish?

      JR: Or to feel that our species is capable of doing any better than it does.

      JC: Oh, I think we know that. I know that we know that we can do better. Bucky [Buckminster Fuller] knew that. He kept talking about success in contrast to failure, which he considered was what we were doing. He made the distinction between “killingry” and “livingry,” and we’re now at a possible point of shifting the Gulf crisis from killingry to livingry. From the concern with killing people as a solution to letting people live as a solution. That’s where the hope lies in the present Gulf crisis.

      JR: If you think of that as a ratio—“killingry” to “livingry”—do you think that ratio has changed?

      JC: Yes, I think it’s in the process of changing. I see the change in the Russian-USA relationship as a move in that direction. And I see the possible outcome of this Gulf crisis as being non-militaristic. And that would be a step in the same direction. It would be toward the use of words rather than guns. And it would give an incredible boost to optimism, and it would spark minds. But I would like to equate the possibility of military violence with the possibility of drug addiction … that they’re both the same thing, they’re extremes of moving away from intelligence. It’s not that the drugs are bad, it’s that the addiction, or placing the attention in such a way that you have no freedom, is bad. Don’t you think? If there could be a taking of drugs mixed, as it has been in the past, with spirituality—that would be a step in the right direction.

      JR: We are, I think, a bunch who do need to be—

      JC: Changed.

      JR: Jolted out of habitual perspectives.

      JC: And drugs can be effective in that way. I think that’s true, so I didn’t want to speak against it. Do you know his books, Andrew Weil, who hopes for legalization of drugs?⁴ But he speaks also of Buddhism—which has long involved me on an amateur level—as one way of altering the spirit without recourse to drugs.

      JR: My feeling is that various disciplines of attention can do that.

      JC: So that enlightenment can come either chemically or not. (laughter)

      JR: I have a question about I-VI, from the transcript of the seminars you gave at Harvard, pages 177–78, where you talk about the performance of a piece of music as a kind of metaphor for the way society works.⁵ You’re answering a question at the time that has to do with the political dimensions of music, the social implications of music. You say, “Performance of a piece of music can be a metaphor of society, of how we want society to be. We could make a piece of music in which we would be willing to live, a piece of music as a representation of a society in which you would be willing to live.” I thought about your interest in Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein talks about language as a form of life, but I haven’t found any place where he talks explicitly about art as a form of life, even in this book [Culture and Value] which collects his writings on art, though it seems to me to be directly implied.⁶ I’m curious about how far you might take the notion of the performance of the piece being—

      JC: A metaphor of society?

      JR: Yes, but also wondering whether it is really a metaphor or representation and not actually a “form of life” itself, in some important sense. Somehow calling it a metaphor seems to remove it.

      JC: Oh, I see. No, you’re right. It doesn’t have to be called that. But, in other words, you would go to a concert and you would hear these people playing without a conductor, hmm? And you would see this group of individuals and you would wonder how in hell are they able to stay together? And then you would gradually realize that they were really together, rather than because of music made to be together. In other words, they were not going one two three four, one two three four, hmm? But that all the things that they were sounding were together, and that each one was coming from each one separately, and they were all together. The togetherness was from within rather than imposed, hmm? They were not following a conductor, nor were they following an agreed-upon metrics. Nor were they following an agreed-upon … may I say poetry?—meaning feeling or expression, hmm? They were not doing that either. Each one could be feeling in quite a different way at the same time that they were being together, hmm?

      JR: So that really is a kind of microcosm of an—

      JC: Of an anarchist society, yes. That they would have no common idea, they would be following no common law. The one thing that they would be in agreement about would be something that everyone is in agreement about, even the masses.

      JR: Even the mythological masses.

      JC: And that is, what time it is. They would agree that the clock is correct.

      JR: Somehow, in this context, even that sounds major. (laughter) Not in the least bit trivial.

      JC: They would agree that it was ten o’clock rather than eleven o’clock. Although that’s a kind of artifice. I’m thinking of the people who live, say, on a time line and of narrative agreement or disagreement about what time it is. They could speak together and reply one hour later in the next second. (laughter) (Tape recorder turned off for lunch.)

      JR: Taking the idea of art as a metaphor of society or as a form of life further, I wonder how you would respond to the current kinds of arguments that are being