Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Stefano Pocci <>]

On 04/11/2013 11:12 PM, Rod Stasick wrote:
> My thought is that if one decides to change the rules
> to fit some preconceived idea of beauty, then not only
> is the point lost, but the opportunity to change yourself
> disappears as well - which, frankly, is a shame. Plus, you
> run the risk of producing a text that's like marching feet.
> Coming across a word in a series of words that doesn't "fit"
> creates an opportunity for its placement within a kind of
> free-form listener-based interpretation which could create
> all kinds of mental playfulness - often involving extrapolation.
>
> R




I understand your point Rod. It is more interesting to comply with the 
50% or 100% rules trying to find a workaround, in other words a term 
that respects them, than relaxing the rules at one's convenience. For 
beauty purposes or whatever.

I believe that the Meister Eckhart mesostic I pointed at in my previous 
email is a kind of 'intelligible' text that kind of 'obeys to 
syntactical rules'. Or maybe it is just a coincidence (let's forget of 
John's error for a sec) that the mesostic has a clear sense. If I'm not 
mistaken, the upper part is taken from Sculptures Musicales by Marcel 
Duchamp whereas the lower one is extracted from a Coomaraswamy text 
(quoting Eckhart himself maybe, don't remember).

In case of extended "writing through-s" instead, the 50% and 100% rules 
make this self-modification you speak of quite evident, since the 
majority of the mesostics so created would wash syntax away and convey 
this playfulness within the listener, who could make his own 
connections/associations, that John was aiming at.

--

Stefano


In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, 
bloodshed —but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the 
Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy 
and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

- Harry Lime (Orson Welles) in the "The Third Man" -