John Cage

Some Pseudoscience: On Silence

I let myself live in silence sometimes

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Random / 14 Comments
September 8th, 2010 / 7:44 pm

Craft Notes & HTMLGIANT Features

On Influence: Anger Lynch Cage Rauschenberg

The first Kenneth Anger film I saw I think was Kustom Kar Kommandos. It was the first piece on a VHS compilation of his movies that my Satanic friend R. had. R. was a cousin of a kid I’d gone to elementary and middle school with, J., who one day I remember showing me a Polaroid of his other cousin having sex with a dog. We were on the smaller bus that went from the elementary school to my house, which was about a mile and a half. J. thought it was funny. I also first saw the word fuck written on that bus I think, though I didn’t say it out loud or know what it meant for another year.

Kustom Kar Kommandos was filmed in 1965 and was supposed to be the first of an eight part film about erotic teenagers and machines. Showing of this first section failed to help Anger get the money he needed to make the rest, so he gave up. Me and R. and another also Satanic kid, L., (I was not Satanic) watched the film that first time in the “play room” of my parents’ house, sitting all of us together on a futon. The play room was my first bedroom in the house but since my parents had built on, it now just kept all the old toys and games and other crap we never really used. By this point the room was basically storage. Today it still has several boxes full of junk I never unboxed after my loft got hit by the first tornado to land on downtown Atlanta, right on me.

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August 9th, 2010 / 2:55 pm

That      we
have      no      ears      to      hear      the
music      the      spores      shot      off
from      basidia      make      obliges      us
to     busy      ourselves      microphonically.

-John Cage in Indeterminacy, a lecture performance in which Cage recited a series of one-minute stories and anecdotes in no particular order. Cage was a mycologist and many of the stories were about mushrooms. Some of the mushroom stories are collected here.

Cage on Judgment

“Judge in a state of disinterest as to the effects of the judging.” John Cage, Lecture on Something

Power Quote / 7 Comments
July 28th, 2010 / 1:38 pm