14 - No escape from heaven: John Cage as father figure

Summary

In June 1975, John Cage was a guest composer at Morton Feldman's first “June in Buffalo” seminar. At regular meetings during the week he had the attending young composers talk about and play their music, and he would comment. Since there were too many composers for the allotted time, Cage assigned everyone a number and used the I Ching to choose which composers should speak. One young woman was incensed by the arbitrariness of this method, and every day became more vocal opposing it. The other young composers, myself included (for I was there), regarded Cage's slightest whim as divine mandate and considered the young woman a pain in the neck. Opinions that she should shut up abounded between sessions. Finally, at one of the sessions Cage entered and began by saying, “I've been thinking it over, and I've decided that Mary's right. We'll drop the chance operations, and whoever wants may talk about their work.”

Of all the lessons I learned from Cage, that was the biggest, the most startling, and the most profound: the Confucian principle that ideas exist for the sake of people, not the other way around. Mary probably was right, but our unquestioned assumption of Cage's greatness threw any disagreement from so obscure a source into relief as a falsehood not worthy of examination. Cage was more open-minded than any of us. Nor was the lesson primarily, or at least exclusively, an ethical one.