Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Perloff on Cage/Cunningham

On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 5:59 PM, S.E.M. Ensemble <[email protected]>wrote:

> When SEM performed Variations IV in 1989 and Ben Neill pointed out to all
> sorts of ambiguities in the instructions, Cage told him to pay any attention
> to it.
>

I think a word is added or missing here. Do you mean "Cage told him to pay
attention to it" or "Cage told him not to pay any attention to it"?

>
> On 6/19/11 3:27 PM, "Rob Haskins" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi Stefano,
> Thanks for your comments. I should hasten to add that I think Cage is full
> of paradoxes! it's just that the paradox that you mention, and that many
> mention, is probably not one of them.
>
> My dissertation was finished in 2004 and I recently published it (with a
> revised bibliography and much better layout) in VDM Verlag as *Anarchic
> Societies of Sounds: The Number Pieces of John Cage*. I also address some
> of these points (more modestly) in my book *John Cage*, part of Reaktion
> Books's Critical Lives series, which will be published in the spring or
> summer of 2012.
>
> The use of the term "symbolic investiture" in Julia Robinson's essay is
> right on the money, I think. I might assign a portion of that essay to my
> students in the Cage seminar I'm teaching in the spring. Don't miss Branden
> Joseph's essay (in the same collection), which I think is really fine.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob
>
> On Sun, Jun 19, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Stefano Pocci <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>
>  On 06/19/2011 05:30 PM, Rob Haskins wrote:
>
>
>
> I'm also coming late to this discussion, and I haven't read Perloff's
> article thoroughly myself--but one remark Stefano makes struck a chord with
> me and I thought I'd address it  briefly. I might have more to say about
> Perloff's article later.
>
>
> Stefano writes,
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> What's interesting about that piece is its theme, the "constructed anarchy"
> issue. I might sound a bit naive on this but one of the things that keeps me
> hooked on Cage's works and writings is the apparent paradox of the rules he
> followed to practice anarchy.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I studied Cage's interest in anarchism in my dissertation, and haven't yet
> written up the results in a proper article, but I hope to do this. Briefly,
> anarchism for Cage does not, I think, mean a state of total chaos, but
> rather a political affiliation in which the individuals involved mutually
> work out how they will live together in an action of continual negotiation
> and renegotiation. There  is, then, no paradox between rules rigorously
> followed and a resulting constructed anarchism. What Cage aimed to do in his
> music was to allow all the instruments and voices (the sounds) the
> opportunity to seem equally important, and (for the audience) the
> possibility that all those various sounds could be heard in a multiplicity
> of ways. Cage's music is indeed a model of anarchistic communities, and the
> act of listening to them a kind of participation within those communities.
> (Joan Retallack makes this point brilliantly in, I think, "Poethics of a
> Complex Realism.")
>  To this I would add that Cage's discipline and rigor relate not so much to
> his anarchistic beliefs as they do to his peculiar appropriation of Zen
> principles into his work. I believe it's very difficult (and probably
> unproductive) to try completely to disentangle the various strands that make
> up his aesthetic practice but rather, to maintain a more synthetic approach
> when thinking critically about his ideas. (As indeed Cage himself did in his
> vast appropriations of disparate thinkers.)
>
>
>
>
>
> All best,
>
>
> Rob
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  Thanks for your very informative reply Rob. I haven't thought of anarchy
> the way you put it (as you say Cage actually put it:-). If so, then there's
> no need to speak of a "paradox" since my use of that word descends from the
> usual notion of anarchy that is "total chaos", more or less. Cage implied
> the use of smartness for his anarchic world, something that man wasn't
> possessing at all, like he used to say.
>
>  Your words also reminded me of the creativeness left to the audience which
> is a real peer of the executor (as well as of the composer) in his music, if
> we could only open our ears! That is the anarchy is was aiming to I suspect.
> Of course his rigidness could be related to his embrace of the Zen
> principles but I cannot go much further than agreeing with you as I haven't
> vetted this aspect too deeply yet.
>
>  One more thing though. While reading Julia Robinson's extended essay in
> "The Anarchy of Silence" catalog, a very crucial point is made. She calls it
> "symbolic investiture" which, if I got it right, consists in the way Cage
> absorbed and made his own use of other thinkers' opinions and theories. Cage
> might be the very first one to creatively appropriate of someone else's
> work, not just a mere quoting process.
>
>  That said, it would be nice to read your dissertation on Cage's anarchy
> whenever you write it.
>
>
>
>


-- 
Joseph Zitt ::http://www.josephzitt.com