Oh, John Cage...

Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)

“When information rubs against information...

the results are startling and effective. The perrenial quest for involvement, fill-in, takes many forms.” The Medium Is the Massage

From The Aspen International Design Conference 1966 John Cage Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)

I. Continue; I'll discover where you sweat (Kierkegaard). We are getting rid of ownership, substituting use. Beginning with ideas. Which ones can we take? Which ones can we give? Disappearance of power politics. Non- measurement. Japanese, he said: We also hear with our feet I'd quoted Busoni: Standing between musician and music is notation. Before I'd given the history: chance operations, indeterminacy. I'd cited the musics of India: notation of them's after the fact. I'd spoken of direct musical action (since it's ears, not interposing eyes). 2:00 A.M., Jensen said, "Even if you didn't like the results (Lindsay, etc.), we hope you liked the telling of it." Telling (?) of it! We were there while it was happening! II. Minimum ethic: Do what you said you'd do. Impossible? Telephone. No answer? My idea was that if they wanted to fight (human nature and all that), they should do it in the Antarctic, rest of us gambling on daily outcome: proceeds for world welfare. Instead they're cooperative down there, exchanging data, being friendly. April '64: U.S. State Department man gave Honolulu talk -- "global village whether we like it or not" --, cited fifty-five services which are global in extent. Mountain range dividing Oahu, formerly crenelated (crenelations for self- protection while shooting arrows), is now tunneled, permitting population circulation. Wars etc. part of dying political-economic structures. Social work equals increasing number of global services. III. AS MCLUHAN SAYS, EVERYTHING HAPPENS AT ONCE. IMAGE IS NO LONGER STREAM FALLING OVER ROCKS, GETTING FROM ORIGINAL TO FINAL PLACE; IT'S AS TENNEY EXPLAINED: A VIBRATING COMPLEX, ANY ADDITION OR SUBTRACTION OF COMPONENT(S), REGARDLESS OF APPARENT POSITION(S) IN THE TOTAL SYSTEM, PRODUCING ALTERATION, A DIFFERENT MUSIC. FULLER: AS LONG AS ONE HUMAN BEING IS HUNGRY, THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE IS HUNGRY. City planning's obsolete. What's needed is global planning so Earth may stop stepping like octopus on its own feet. Buckminster Fuller uses his head: comprehensive design science; inventory of world resources. Conversion: the mind turns around, no longer facing in its direction. Utopia? Self-knowledge. Some will make it, with or without LSD. The others? Pray for acts of God, crises, power failures, no water to drink. IV. We see symetrically; canoe on the northern Canadian lake; stars in the midnight sky repeated in water; forested shores precisely mirrored. Our hearing's assymetrical: noticed sounds surprise us; echoes of shouts we make transform our voices; straight line of sound from us to shore's followed by echo's slithering around the lake's perimeter. When I said "Fifty-five global services," California Bell Telephone man replied (September '65), "It's now sixty-one." The seasons (creation, preservation, destruction, quiescence): this was experience and resultant idea (no longer is: he flies to Rio). What shall we wear as we travel about? A summer suit with or without long underwear? What about Stein's idea: People are the way their land and air is? V. When I said that culture was changing from Renaissance to what it is now (McLuhan), Johns objected to what he said was an oversimplification. But Johns was speaking according to our non- Renaissance experience: total field, non- focused multiplicity. We are, are we not, socially speaking, in a situation of the old dying and the new coming into being? For the old -- paying bills, seeking for power -- take the attitude of play: games. For the new -- doing what isn't necessary, moving sand from one part of the beach to another" (Buckminster Fuller) -- take the religious attitude: celebration. (It celebrates.) The people have left. The cat and kittens were taken to the SPCA. The house is full of fleas. VI. They say totally determined music and indeterminate music sound the same. I visited Hamada. Getting up from the wheel, he said, "I'm not interested in results; just going on. Art's in process of coming into its own: life. The lake is undefined. The land around rests upon it, obscuring tis shape, shape that needs to remain unrevealed. Sung. "Floating World." Rain, curtain of wind- swept lake's surface beyond: second view (there are others, he tells me, one with mists rising). Yesterday it was stillness and reflections, groups of bubbles. An American garden: water, not sand; vegetation, not stones. Thunder. Without intending to, I'm going from lake to lake. Saltair. Salt Lake. VII. Hugh Nibley. I hadn't seen him since high school days. I asked him what he thought about other planets and sentient populations. Yes, he said, throughout the universe: it's Mormon doctrine. We'd said good-bye. I opened the door of the car, picked up my attache case and everything in it fell out on the grass and the gutter. His comment: Something memorable always happens. Things we were going to do are now being done by others. They were, it seems, not in our minds to do (were we or they out of our minds?) but simply ready to enter any open mind, any mind disturbed enough not to have an idea in it. VIII. The daily warmth we experience, my father said, is not transmitted by Sun to Earth but is what Earth does in response to Sun. Measurements, he said, measure measuring means. Basho: Matsutake ya shirano ko no ha no hebaritsuku. The leaf of some unknown tree sticking on the mushroom (Blythe). Mushroom does not know that leaf is sticking on it (Takemitsu). Project: Discover way to translate Far Eastern texts so Western men can read orientally. Communication? Bakarashi! Words without syntax, each word polymorphic. He wanted me to agree that the piano tuner and the piano maker have nothing to do with it (the composition), The younger ones had said: Whoever makes the stretcher isn't separate from the painting. (It doesn't stop there either.) IX. LOOKING IN ALL DIRECTIONS NOT JUST ONE DIRECTION. Housing (Fuller) will be, like telephoning, a service. Only circumstance to stop your living there: someone's there already (it's busy). Thus we'll learn to desire emptiness. Not being able to say, "This is mine," we'll want when we inquire to get no response at all. 4:00 P.M. throughout the world. Whether we like it or not (is what he said) it's happening to us. Advertisements are all good; the news is all bad (McLuhan). But how we receive bad news can change: we're glad to hear unemployment's increasing. Soon, all that will be required of us will be one hour's work per year (Fuller). X. They ask what the purpose of art is. Is that how things are? Say there were a thousand artists and one purpose, would one artist be having it and all the nine- hundred and ninety-nine others be missing the point? Arcata Bottom sign said: Experiment endlessly and keep humble. "Write to Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions; they'll know about the global services." I did. They answered they knew nothing, suggested writing to State Department. Books one formerly needed were hard to locate. Now they're all out in paperback. Society's changing. Relevant information's hard to come by. Soon it'll be everywhere, unnoticed. XI. ELECTRONICS. Day comes, the day we die. There's less and less to do: circumstances do it for us. Earth. Old reasons for doing things no longer exist. (Sleep whenever. Your work goes on being done. You and it no longer have a means of separation.) We had the chance to do it individually. Now we must do it together: globally. War will not be group conflict: it'll be murder, pure and simple, individually conceived. Curiosity, awareness. They returned to the fact we all need to eat to explain their devotion to money rather than music. When I spoke of the equation, work equals money equals virtue, they interrupted me (they didn't let me say that nowadays there's no equation), saying, "How can you speak of money and virtue in the same breath?" XII. WHERE THERE DOESN'T SEEM TO BE ANY SPACE, KNOW WE NO LONGER KNOW WHAT SPACE IS. HAVE FAITH SPACE IS THERE, GIVING ONE THE CHANCE TO RENOVATE HIS WAY OF RECOGNIZING IT, NO MATTER THE MEANS, PSYCHIC, SOMATIC, OR MEANS INVOLVING EXTENSIONS OF EITHER. People still ask for definitions, but it's quite clear now that nothing can be defined. Let alone art, its purpose etc. We're not even sure of carrots (whether they're what we think they are, how poisonous they are, who grew them and under what circumstances). SHE WAS INDIGNANT WHEN I SUGGESTED THE USE OF AN APHRODISIAC. WHY? NATURALLY SHE CONSIDERS TV A WASTE OF TIME. XIII. The purpose of one activity is no longer separate from the purpose of any other activity. All activities fuse in one purpose which is (cf. Huang-Po Doctrine of Universal Mind) no purpose. Imitate the Ganges' sands, becoming indifferent to perfume, indifferent to filth. Influence. Where does it come from? Responsibility? Sick ones now are heartsick. Narcissi, they became entranced with emotions purposes, mystified by living in the twentieth century. We've invented something else, not the wheel. We extended nervous systems. McLuhan: Agentbite of Outwit (Location, Spring '63). (The inability of people to be inactive. As Satie said: If I don't smoke, someone else will in my place. Audience participation, active passivity.) XIV. Since the Spirit's omnipresent, there's a difference in things but no difference of spirit. McLuhan was able to say "The medium is the message" because he started from no concern with content. Or choose quantity, not quality (we get quality willy-nilly): i.e. we'd like to stay alive, the changes that are taking place are so many and so interesting. Composition' ll have, he said, less and less to do with what happens. Things happen more quickly. One of the signs you'll get that'll tell you things are going well is that you and everyone else you know will be inhabiting lightweight Dymaxion houses, disengaged from ownership and from unalterable Earth spot (read Fuller). XV. Smiling, she said, let the old ones walk out: there's not much to be done about them in any case. Distractions? Interruptions? Welcome them. They give you the chance to know whether you're disciplined. That way you needn't bother about sitting cross-legged in the lotus position. Phonetics. He was a physicist and a computer-composer in his spare time. Why was he so stupid? Because he was of the opinion that the only thing that will engage the intellect is the measurement of relations between things? When told that his mind could change, his response was, "How? Why?" Conflict won't be between people and people but between people and things. In this conflict let's try to arrange matters so the outcome as in philosophy will never be decisive. Treat redwoods, for instance, as entities that have at least a chance to win. XVI. He wanders through markets as though they were forests and he an exploring botanist (throws nothing away). Lake.

Take what you're working on with you, if, that is, you have something to do. Gaps. What a pity that she should feel obliged to take matters in her own hands! (There's practically no kitchen, he says; and it's already been figured out that money's being saved.) Mexico. Europeans are still up against it. They seem to require a center of interest. They understand tragedy but life itself (and any art that's like it) puzzles them, seems unsatisfactory. We're starved for entertainment (thanking the two women). XVII. By becoming angry I simply altered my biochemistry, bringing about a two-hour recovery. Meanwhile circumstances continued characterized by habit. Going in different directions we get instead of separation a sense of space. Music as discourse (jazz) doesn't work. If you're going to have a discussion, have it and use words. (Dialogue is another matter.) Acts and facts. Straw that breaks the camel's back: their saying No (they advertise they'll say Yes). Principles? Then all's intolerable. No principles (which doesn't mean we fail to become furious). SO? We swim drowning now and then. I must write and tell him about beauty, the urgency to avoid it. XVIII. Hearing of past actions (politics, economics), people soon won't be able to imagine how such things could've happened. Fusing politics with economics prepared disappearance of both. Still invisible. Arriving, realizing we never departed. He mentioned heads on the ceiling Seeing them, noticed him too. Fusion of credit card with passport. Mens of making one's voice heard: refusal to honor credit card. End of the month? That too may be changed: the measurement of time, what season it is, whether it's night or day. In any case, no bills, just added information. "Take it easy, but take it." What'll we do? (Before lunch.) "Wing it." XIX. Wanting list of current global services, how'll I get it? Long costly correspondences? (Pentagon advises telephoning.) I'll write to the President (of the U.S.), to the Secretary (of State of the U.S.). Time passing, I'll ask those I encounter whether they've any information. (McLuhan hadn't any.) I'll write to Fuller. Should have done that in the first place (Pope Paul, Lindsay: Take note). Amateur (used to say, "Don't touch it"') now speaks of audience participation, feels something, anything, is needed, would help. Develop panopticity of mind (Listen). WHAT'LL HAPPEN WHEN INTELLIGENCE IS RECOGNIZED AS A GLOBAL RESOURCE (FULLER)? POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS -- GIVING UP INVOLVEMENT WITH PLAY (PARTNERS, OPPONENTS), INVOLVEMENT WITH UNATTAINABLE GOALS (VICTORIES, TRUTHS, FREEDOMS) -- WILL SIMPLY FADE OUT OF THE PICTURE. IMAGE COMING UP IS THAT OF THE UTILITIES (GAS, ELECTRICITY, TELEPHONES): UNQUESTIONABLE, EMOTIONALLY UNAROUSING. XX. What is a drawing? No one knows any longer. Something that doesn't require that you wait while you're making it for it to dry? Something on paper? Museum director said (Tobey, Schwitters), "It's a question of emphasis." Thanksgiving. Art. Transportation plan (eventually at no monetary cost, conveyances recognized for what they are: extensions of each human being and his luggage): short distances costly (to taxi for one block is a luxury), long trips cheap as dirt (crossing continents, oceans). Effect of videophone on travel? That we'll stay home, settling like gods for impression we'll give of being everywhere at once? XXI. Everywhere where economics and ploitics obtain (everywhere?), policy is dog eat dog. Take taxi tolls between cities. Those in one town higher than those in the other must drive home alone. Relaxation of rules, ties (Take marriage), is indicated. Now that we've got the four-lane roads, we won't have any use for them. (Good for roller-skating, he said.) Refuse value judgments. Since time lags were inordinately long, change's now welcome. Advertising's discredited itself. When they advertise something, we avoid it. There's nothing we really need to do that isn't dangerous. Eighth Street artists knew this years ago: constantly spoke of risk. But what's meant by risk? Lose something? Property, life? Principles?? The way to lose our principles is to examine them, to give them an airing. XXII. Heaven's no longer paved with gold (changes in church architecture). Heaven's a motel. She changed part of the loft: wall-to-wall carpeting, mobile TV. No conflicts. Twenty-two telephone calls were made by Betty Zeiger "disrupting efficiency of federal agencies...dedicated to pursuit of peace." State Department said Hawaii speaker was a woman. Fifty-five (now sixty-one) global services are in area of humanities "beyond mere provision of food/shelter." Not technological services. State Department: Global village developed from "Literary Villages" (plan for the betterment of life in India). "We are packages of leaking water." "The next water you drink may be your own." XXIII. LET'S CALL IT THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS (WE'VE GOT THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS). THE QUESTION IS: WHAT ARE THE THINGS EVERYONE NEEDS REGARDLESS OF LIKES AND DISLIKES? BEGINNING OF ANSWER: WATER, FOOD, SHELTER, CLOTHING, ELECTRICITY, AUDIO-VISUAL COMMUNICATION, TRANSPORTATION. FORM OF ANSWER: GLOBAL UTILITIES NETWORK. Do not fear that as the globe gets utility organized your daily life will not remain (or become as the case may be) disorganized, characterized by chaos, illuminated anarchically. You'll have nothing to do; so what will you do? A lifelong university (Fuller)? In the lobby after La Monte Young's music stopped, Geldzahler said: It's like being in a womb; now that I'm out, I want to get back in. I felt differently and so did Jasper Johns: we were relieved to be released. XXIV. Knowing-seeing, conforming with reality. Anscombe's a feminist, insists on wearing pants. Obliged to lecture dressed in a dress, she took one with her, changed into it, lectured, changed back, walked home (teaching all the time ) in pants. As was said, "When will you undress yourself of your ideas?" No escape. Billy Klüver said decision of judge in South America (e.g.) is taken as precedent by judge in Sweden. Brown's work (Life Against Death) is prophetic (also De Kooning's remark: we no longer have tragedy; the situation an individual may be in is only pathetic): society as a mass is what needs psychoanalysis. (Thus polymorphous perversity, necessity of Utopia.) Looking at billions, unlike Nehru, we must treat them as one person. XXV. SHE SAYS LIFE IS LIKE A BLANK WALL, IMPASSIBLE. CORRECT DEDUCTION: SHE IS IN LOVE. Klüver: ITU lists many international agreements re Morse code, telegrams, telephones, radio, television, emergency signals, meteorological information, frequencies and powers of stations, means to prevent static. "How would it be if these agreements didn't exist?" (ITU asks.) "No press-news, no pictures in the papers, no exchanged radio programs, no static-free radio reception, no meteorological prognoses, no storm warnings, no security at sea, in air." Klüver reports: ITU (International Telecommunication Union) was established in 1865 (nine years older than UPU -- post -- and seventeen older than railroad agreements. XXVI. The truth is that everything causes everything else. We do not speak therefore of one thing causing another. There are no secrets. It's just we thought they said dead when they said bread. Or that we weren't tuned in when transmission took place. Being told about global services, Barnett Newman emphasized the importance of the arts. Society has tape recorders, radio broadcasts, and also copyright laws (which it considers extending). (Gets in its own way.) Get rid of copyright (this text is copyright). We're making nonspecialist interpenetrations. Automation. Alteration of global society through electronics so that world will go round by means of united intelligence rather than by means of divisive intelligence (politics, economics). Say this idea has no basis in fact but arose through brushing of misinformation. No sweat. It arose (the idea exists, is fact). XXVII. Do not imagine there aren't many things to do. We need for instance an utterly wireless technology. Just as Fuller domes (dome within dome, translucent, plants between) will give impression of living in no home at all (outdoors), so all technology must move toward way things were before man began changing them: identification with nature in her manner of operation, complete mystery. Fuller prophecy at end of Tomkins profile of him editorially (New Yorker) eliminated. Subject: global network for electrical power (including China who'd participate in a spirit of practicality). Fuller's remarks considered laughable in view of November blackout. (We need another blackout, one that isn't so pleasant, one that'll suggest using our heads the way Fuller uses his.) XXVIII. We've poisoned our food, polluted our air and water, killed birds and cattle, eliminated forests, impoverished, eroded the earth. We're unselfish, skillful: we include in our acts to perform -- we've had a rehearsal -- the last one. What would you call it? Nirvana? "Not only was instant universal voice communication forecast by David Sarnoff, but also instant television, instant newspapers, instant magazines and instant visual telephone service...the development of such global communications system would link people everywhere...for reorientation toward a 'one-world concept of mass communications in an era marked by the emergence of a universal language, a universal culture and a universal common market.'" XXIX . POPULATION . Art's obscured the difference between art and life. Now let life obscure the difference between life and art. Fuller's life is art: comprehensive design science, inventory of world resources (if enough mined copper exists, re-use it, don't mine more: same with ideas). World needs arranging. It'll be like living a painting by Johns: Stars and Stripes 'll be utilities, our daily lives the brushstrokes. McLuhan: Work's obsolete. Why? Work's partial involvement in activity. Activity is now necessarily total involvement (cf. work of srtists, work not involved in profit). Why total involvement? Electronics. Why everything-at-once? The way we-things are. Yathabhutam. Where there's a history of organization (art), introduce disorder. Where there's a history of disorganization (world society), introduce order. These directives are no more opposed to one another than mountain's opposed to spring weather. "How can you believe this when you believe that?" How can I not? Long life. © John Cage, 1966