Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: RE: Re: Re: Re: Cage's prejudices

By "musicology research" I mean taking something out of context and making
simplistic conclusions. And mainly the belief that everything can be
logically explained. Sorry to sound ³mean-spirited.² I may be mean (not
consciously), but I am certainly not mean-spirited. And never forget what
Varese said about analysis.
My appologies.
PK


On 6/22/11 12:52 PM, "Rob Haskins" <[email protected]> wrote:

> So far, Petr, I'm not sure what you've offered to the discussion that needs
> opposition, intelligent or otherwise. I'm also not sure whether or not to
> interpret your remarks about "musicology research" (whatever you mean by that)
> as a mean-spirited swipe. Perhaps you might clarify that.
> 
> In what way are my thoughts about Cage's writings (or Ian's, or Sara's) merely
> opinion? And what is empirical knowledge? How do you propose applying it to
> this discussion?
> 
> All best,
> Rob
> 
> On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 12:45 PM, S.E.M. Ensemble <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>> Don¹t go too much into the tendency of making analysis according to
>> ³musicology research.² Things are much more complex than any analyzing
>> inquiry can absorb (remember what Varese said about analysis). The issues
>> most important cannot be analyzed anyway.
>> 
>> I am thinking about large scale project(s) in connection with Cage¹s 100 in
>> 2012/13. Would be nice to have someone on board who could intelligently
>> oppose me, not as a result of different opinions, but empirical knowledge.
>> PK
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 6/22/11 11:00 AM, "Rob Haskins" <[email protected]
>> <http://[email protected]> > 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 <[email protected]
>>> <http://[email protected]> > 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.
>>>> 
>>>>  
> 
>