Spring break and… still Cage

Well, too bad Spring break is over… I had a great time and was able to do a lot of simple things that are hard to do during class time. For example, my husband and I were able to paint the baby’s bedroom… it looks really cute. We also rested, played, visited with other friends, and talked about Cage… I think I finally digested and concluded my thoughts on him, so here it is:
I never really liked Cage, but I knew so little about him that I decided I would give it a try and use this opportunity in class to explore him more. As hard as it is I tried to put my “preconception” on him aside and make a completely new reading of this polemic, should I say, figure. I was excited about being happily surprised with what I would learn about him and prepared to humbly say “I was so wrong!” Very disappointing… It turned out that the more I learned about him, the lesser I liked it.

The first thing that really bothers me is his lack of consistence. His statements sound contradictory, irrational, and unreasonable. For example, he once said "You can become narrow minded, literally, by only liking certain things and disliking others, but you can become open-minded, literally, by giving up your likes and dislikes and becoming interested in things." Kostelanetz 1988, 231, but later on he says that “When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking, and talking about his feelings or about his ideas of relationships, but when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic… I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking, I have the feeling that sound is acting and I love the activity of sound. What it does is it gets louder and quieter, and it gets higher and lower, and it gets longer and shorter, it does all those things which I am completely satisfied with that, I don’t need sound to talk to me.” Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y). First of all, what is left of a person that has no likes or dislikes? Is that possible? If it was, is he trying to say that he is open-minded because he is interested in things when he writes his music, but at the same time he is writing them based on his likes and dislikes? I don’t understand it…

What is the pattern in Cage music? (and this is a very, very honest question since I really don’t know that much about it). I believe you are all familiar with the name of American painter Jackson Pollock. The movie/documentary “Who the … is Pollock?” tells the story of a women who believes she had purchased, accidentally, one of Pollock’s works. Her challenge is to prove the originality of the piece since this work has not been listed among the other paintings of Pollock and it has no signature. Pollock’s dripping and pouring techniques, which is so random and totally object of the chance, have such a unique pattern that it gives enough material for the expertise to dwell on the subject for several years. I keep thinking if one would be able to identify a “lost” work of Cage…

Susan and I were talking and I think we came up with a better label for Cage, instead of ‘composer’ we should just call him an ‘experimentalist.’ All he did was to play with sounds, experiment them, and I enjoy it, as an experiment. Taking 4’33’’ for an example, the principle of it is that the music is in everywhere and is made by every and anything; great sound experience, but one should not claim it as his/her own music/composition because this is the music (if one wants to call it this way) of the environment. I think that to claim one thigh which is not yours as being your is considered plagiarism ☺

At the end of the story I think Cage was really a great entertainer. I thought I would have my baby when we watched “Water Walk” in class. I was laughing so hard that I started to feel bad that I was enjoying the performance so much in that way (I still can’t decided if I liked the “duck squeaking” better that the “pressure-pan-manipulation” – all amazing!!!!) but I decided to take Cage’s own words “I consider laughter preferable to tears” youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSulycqZH-U) and indulge myself with an extraordinary time with that performance!!!!!