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Illustrations
| Figure 1. John Cage working at Crown Point Press, 1981 | 97 |
| Figure 2. John Cage, Changes and Disappearances, 1979–82, No. 17 | 98 |
| Figure 3. John Cage working on Changes and Disappearances at Crown Point Press, 1981 | 98 |
| Figure 4. John Cage, Where There Is, Where There—Urban Landscape, 1987–89, No. 22 | 114 |
| Figure 5. John Cage, Global Village 37–48, 1989 | 115 |
| Figure 6. John Cage lighting a fire on the etching press bed at Crown Point Press, January 1992 | 117 |
| Figure 7. John Cage with printers placing damp paper on fire at Crown Point Press, January 1992 | 118 |
| Figure 8. John Cage, Variations III, 1992, No. 10 | 119 |
| Figure 9. Robert Rauschenberg, Automobile Tire Print, 1953 | 123 |
| Figure 10. John Cage, New River Watercolor, Series II, 1988, No. 8 | 123 |
| Figure 11. Mark Tobey, untitled, 1961 | 126 |
| Figure 12. John Cage, Without Horizon, 1992, No. 46 | 130 |
| Figure 13. John Cage, HV2, 1992, No. 25 | 133 |
| Figure 14. John Cage, “(untitled)” | 193 |
| Figure 15. Ryoanji drawing, excerpt from score, rocks and pencils | 241 |
| Figure 16. Working notes on which Losa had been lying | 258 |
| Figure 17. Mineko Grimmer Sound Sculpture | 276 |
Acknowledgments
John Cage was, and is, the raison d’être and moving spirit of this book, but it has been a complicated project involving many other people in ways both explicit and obliquely indispensable. So many that it is impossible to fully acknowledge even a fraction of my debt. The great-humored presence of Merce Cunningham has been an encouragement and a benevolent horizon throughout. It is no exaggeration to say that without the ongoing cheerful support, good sense, and intelligence of Laura Kuhn, Director of The John Cage Trust—in all phases of transcribing, writing, and editing—this book could not have been realized.
Neither would it have been possible to complete this project without generous gifts of time and, in many cases, painstaking assistance from Michael Bach Bachtischa, Peter Baker, Charles Bernstein, Kathan Brown, Andrew Culver, Alan Devenish, Tom Delio, Ulla Dydo, Gretchen Johnson, Gloria Parloff, Marjorie Perloff, Henry Segal, Rod Smith, Juliana Spahr, Holly Swain, and Gregory Ulmer—all of whom read, commented on, and corrected portions of the manuscript. Kathan Brown, the Director of Crown Point Press, generously contributed the photographs of John Cage and his prints that give this book much of its visual interest. Andrew Culver was a constant and generous source of materials, information, and ideas.
William Anastasi, Elaine Avidon, Norman O. Brown, Clark Coolidge, André Gervais, Anne d’Harnoncourt, Robert Emrich, Mineko Grimmer, Mimi Johnsen, Charles Junkerman, Ray Kass, David Krakauer, Julie Lazar, Lois Long, Jackson Mac Low, Tom Moore, Nam June Paik, William R. Paulson, James Pritchett, Robert Rauschenberg, Margarete Roeder, Susan Sheehan, Ralph Siu, Paul Van Emmerik, David Vaughan, Brent Zerger, and many others, provided essential information and materials. Anne Tardos compiled the extensive index for this book and, in that process, helped in numerous and humorous and surprising ways.
I am grateful to Terry Cochran, former director of Wesleyan University Press, who took this book on and guided it with equanimity through some early perils; to Suzanna Tamminen, Administrative Director at Wesleyan, who became its good-natured and helpful guide through later complications; and to the production staff at the University Press of New England for their patient handling of the third wave of crises on the way to publication.
Art Is Either a Complaint or Do Something Else is used by permission of The John Cage Trust and was previously published in Aerial 6/7 (1991). Excerpts from John Cage’s music (Ryoanji for Bass, One8, Two6, Ten, and Europera 5) are used by kind permission of the publisher, Henmar Press Inc. (C. F. Peters Corporation), with special thanks to Don Gillespie, Vice President of C. F. Peters. All music manuscript materials from The John Cage Trust are used by kind permission of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which has acquired the collection.
Introduction: Conversations in Retrospect
Joan Retallack
The role of the composer is other than it was. Teaching, too, is no longer transmission of a body of useful information, but’s conversation, alone, together, whether in a place appointed or not in that place…. We talk, moving from one idea to another as though we were hunters….