Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Stefano Pocci <>]

On 07/18/2012 07:32 PM, Semih Firincioglu wrote:

Stefano, Lecture on Nothing is one of the several writings I just translated
into Turkish. I was kind of surprised by this dingbat as well and I scanned
it to be used in the Turkish book. Yet, I just want to point out that
Silence was not put together very carefully, there are several reference
errors, etc. There may even be a missing-line mistake in the Lecture (in
terms of 48-based structure). The book may have been put together fairly
quickly and probably there was no one to properly edit something that
unusual. Plus, the technology was not computer-based of course.

In short, that dingbat may have been chosen as one of the interesting but
limited possibilities at that time. I wouldn't look for deeper meanings.

Talking about meaning: I kind of got stuck with the translation of "I have
nothing to say and I am saying it," believe it or not. In English it may
mean "I don't have anything to say and that is what I am saying" or "all I
have is "nothing" and that "nothing" is what I am delivering." You can go
only in one direction in Turkish and I took the first route but it still
bugs me. Appropriately obsessive and possibly silly, I guess.

Semih

Thank you for the detailed response Semih. Even if Cage never did something really totally randomly - I hope the list forgives this little joke of mine - all the Silence replies, including yours, are reassuring me that the choice was just... one of the many possible ones.

Lecture on nothing was published on Incontri Musicali (Musical encounters), an Italian magazine whose four volumes should be re-released sooner or later (it is in the schedule under www.lucianoberio.org future projects). It could be interesting to see how was typographically rendered then.

Maybe :-)


Speaking of nothingness: I guess this example of yours exemplifies how weak (any) language can be at times. Thanks again

-- 

Stefano

"She's wearing nothing but a smile"