Re: [F_MINOR] John Cage

[Elmer_Elevator <bobmer.javanet@RCN.COM>]

People come and people go, so it's likely that a lot of people now on
f_minor don't know the sordid details of my first encounter with John Cage.

In the interests of Fair and Balanced reporting, here is an old f_minor post
of mine which explains how I first bumped into John Cage, and why he, or his
estate, owes me $14.

Some newcomers may also not know of the existence of a List devoted to John
Cage called Silence. In many ways, it's the Bizarro mirror-image f-minor.
Day on f_minor is Night on Silence, Good on Silence is Bad on f_minor, etc.

Immediately after I posted my snort against John Cage, we realized there was
a Spy or a Mole in our midst, because my snort also was re-posted on
Silence, and generated a bit of ugly trans-List friction. The Cage
Worshippers were very angry at the blasphemy from the Gould Worshippers.

Amyway, here's my teenage Cage memoir:

http://www.newalbion.com/artists/cagej/silence/html/2000q4/0079.html

The only thing to add is that, once you peek into the Silence archives, be
very careful about not tarrying, and returning swiftly to f_minor. This is
one Weird Kult if you ask me, and I don't know if deprogramming would work.

Elmer (who's still waiting for his $14 plus 40 years of interest)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Jo Watts" <mwatts@EDEN.RUTGERS.EDU>
To: <F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, July 06, 2004 1:39 PM
Subject: [F_MINOR] John Cage


> Um-- I vote that Cage is a serious artist worth attention.  I also vote
> that he is not. One of the things that seems to be missing from
> discussions of Cage on f_minor is that he was a poet and a composer and
> a mushroom expert and many other things.  He had a terrific sense of
> humor and often found the most mundane things profound.  His
> observations challenge me all the time. Cage was influenced to a degree
> by Zen Buddhism and the compositions people seem to find most absurd of
> his seem very much to me like Zen koans.  I have a friend who is a
> serious Zen practitioner.  She once held up her hand and said "what do
> you see?" and I pointed to her fingers and I said "um, well, um, a
> HAND!"  She said "that is the difference between you and me-- I see the
> space between the fingers and around the hand."  Deep.

<snip>

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