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

Sorry, you are right, I should read carefully what I type (in haste).
Of course the sentence should have been:
Cage told him NOT to pay any attention to it
Thanks for catching it.
PK

On 6/19/11 7:34 PM, "Joseph Zitt" <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> 
> 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]
>> <http://[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]
>>> <http://[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.
>>>> 
>>>>  
> 
>