Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

["Heimbecker, Sara" <>]

Two quick thoughts:


  1.  Cage’s political thinking changes quite a bit over the span of his 
life, as one would expect.  He does not always hold what Stefano called an 
“acceptance position” and at the end of his life what looks like 
“retreat/defeat” may really be that.  (More “retreat” than “defeat.”)  I 
think we need to be really specific about contextualizing the debate.
  2.  I think it helps to put this critique of Cage that Rob, Ian and I have 
been proposing into context as well.  It seems a little unfair to place 
today’s standards on a now historical figure.  However, Christian Wolff said 
that Cage always fancied himself on the cutting edge politically and 
socially, but by the end of the 1960s he was really surprised to be “left 
behind” by artists just a bit younger who were much more politically active.  
Wolff admitted that there was indeed something strange about Cage’s politics. 
 It’s not just our retrospective eye that is making this “politically 
correct” observation.  Cage’s younger contemporaries were making this 
critique of him as well—quietly and respectfully.  (Well, except for Cardew!)

Rob, perhaps the list is springing to life because he finally have a little 
time to think about these interesting topics!

Sara




On 6/22/11 9:00 AM, "Rob Haskins" 
<>
 wrote:

Wow, the Silence list remains dormant, almost nonexistent, for months and 
then this burst of activity happens. Lovely.

I think there's been a tendency, especially in musicology, to try to keep the 
music value free: to discuss music and music, art for art's sake. That's 
begun to break down (has been for some time, since the 1980s). Cage is ripe 
for the kind of interrogation Ian proposes. And while I sympathize with 
Stefano's view--that he pointed toward the problem in a way that invited 
people to look at it anew with the hope of solving it--I wish he could have 
been a little more proactive about it himself. His beliefs in anarchism 
prevented him, for instance, from signing on to protest anything one way or 
the other, because (I think) he feared that speaking in support for it might 
have coerced others who could not think as clearly or carefully into taking 
on that belief or cause inauthentically.  The subtle power structures that 
exist today can easily appropriate and subvert this kind of thinking.

best,
Rob

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 5:10 AM, Stefano Pocci 
<>
 wrote:

 On 06/21/2011 07:42 PM, Ian Pace wrote:
Cage spoke and wrote often about his social/political views; it was hardly as 
if he was disengaged from debate. And on several occasions he made very 
explicit his opposition to active politics and protest movements, as with:

 'I am interested in social ends, but not in political ends, because politics 
deals with power, and society deals with numbers of individuals; and I'm 
interested in both single individuals and large numbers or medium numbers or 
any kinds or numbers of individuals. In other words, I'm interested in 
society, not for purposes of power, but for purposes of cooperation and 
enjoyment. ' (Interview in Source (1969), cited in Richard Kostelanetz, 
Conversing with Cage, second edition (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 
p. 274)

 or

 My notion of how to proceed in a society to bring change is not to protest 
the thing that is evil, but rather to let it die its own death. And I think 
we can state that the power structure is dying because it cannot make any 
inspiring statements about what it is doing.

 I think that protests about these things, contrary to what has been said, 
will give it the kind of life that a fire is given when you fan it, and that 
it would be best to ignore it, put your attention elsewhere, take actions of 
another kind of positive nature, rather than continue to give life to the 
negative by negating it. (Cage, 'Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will 
Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1968 (Revised)', in M; Writings '67-'72 
(Middletown, CN: Wesleyan University Press, 1969), p. 12)

 or

 'Protest movements could quite easily, ad despite themselves, lead in the 
opposite direction, to a reinforcement of law and order. There is in 
acceptance and non-violence an underestimated revolutionary force. but 
instead, protest is all too often absorbed into the flow of power, because it 
limits itself to reaching for the same old mechanisms of power, which is the 
worst way to challenge authority! We'll never get away from it that way!' 
(Interviewed by Daniel Charles, c. 1970, in For the Birds (London: Marion 
Boyars, 1981), p. 236)

 The last comment in particular makes a lot of powerful points, but Cage's 
resignation (with respect to 'acceptance', non-violence is another matter) 
seems particularly casual in light of some of the achievements of protest in 
the years leading up to then. How would Rosa Parks have felt about this, say? 
The second quote I find actually quite crass when considering the vital work 
of human rights organisations or dissident groups in bringing to wider 
attention terrible human rights abuses in various regimes, and protesting 
these - I am pretty sure many such regimes would prefer Cage's option. With 
respect to lynchings, Jim Crow laws, etc., would it have been 'best to ignore 
it, put your attention elsewhere'?

 If Cage simply had not had much to say about any form of politics, it would 
be one thing, but this was far from the case. As he had so much to say on 
this subject, it's only fair that these might be interrogated. If it is all 
right to cite them positively, as many writers on Cage have done, then it 
should be all right to look at them more critically as well.

 Best,
 Ian







 Great discussion, thanks a lot to everyone involved.


 I'd like to quote Satie as Cage did in his lecture for the French composer 
when the latter says:

 "Personally, I am neither good nor bad. I sway, if one may say that. 
Actually I have never done anyone any harm - or good either."

 or Buckminster Fuller when he said that "he was working to make the existent 
system obsolete". (I think) I can see why Cage mentioned these lines or why 
he was so into Duchamp's works which were not a matter of "being bad or good" 
but something beyond this uninteresting polar situation. It's the same thread 
(to me) that ties the anarchy and politics issues and the way he treated 
them. Or maybe re-treated them:-)

 Ian anticipated me with a couple of appropriate quotations such as: 
"protesting it's like throwing gas over a fire" or "protest is being absorbed 
by the power forces". Cage would rather continue without a qualm on his path 
(emptiness-silence) following his strict principles (which don't imply 
contradiction with anarchy as I had wrongly thought so far) as that's the way 
to forge ahead (citing his "living on water" mesostic here). I feel like the 
reason why these statements still generate this kind of discussions must be 
found both in a more critical (and fairer) view of Cage's opinions and in his 
being outside any kind of model we try to place him in.

 Of course the real troubles (racism, poverty, wars, political climate, etc) 
he was surrounded by remained, which is why his acceptance position was 
sometimes valued as a retreat/defeat and therefore inserted again in the 
cause-effect scheme such acceptance refused. But even if we state that his 
thoughts weren't practical/concrete enough, had the remedies then devised 
proved to work so far? At least Cage offers a different (I should have said 
"outside") point of view that (hopefully) compels us to think of a new kind 
of solution.

 Ian is right when he says that "...With respect to lynchings, Jim Crow laws, 
etc., would it have been 'best to ignore it, put your attention elsewhere'?". 
Of course not. But (I think) Cage was pointing at the root of the issue. WHY 
those things happened and HOW TO prevent them to happen again. We need a 
long-term solution as well as a immediate one for present troubles, that's 
the big challenge.