Pantechnicon; John Cage

The talk I'm going to get as you know is car rhythm etc.. If attack came about and I would tell you the circumstances and the mean by which I wrote and then after I read it we can engage in discussion if you wish George catfish and I have been here collecting tax. People. Combining them in a book. There really has been already and this text will appear in the next three home group a Scottish diary and you wrote me that that invited me to write something for the book that would have to do with the module and would I please disguise a question of rhythm harmony proportion beauty and I forget art

and I wrote back that I wasn't interested in any of those things. Anyway. And meet dad and he wrote back that he would like me. I thought. That I might have. Felt that he had I thought Where in heaven's name did he pick up all those words. And then I thought it looked obvious and a book called You know and I live in one and the buildings that are connected by life are. Really. Good. Favorite architect. Surely he'll have this. By the next hour.

Did he have the book. I began reading it and immediately all of these words popped out of the page together with an explanation of why the guy got busy and about music. I thought I had had the practice. Which I have not always thought I would but I have followed it from time to time. I would drive me back by the same means that I write music and composition it has seemed to me to vote for the writing text and I've used it several times. My parents made a series of transparency which may be placed over one another over a sheet.

Thank you. Hi there are that are not transparent. The first had one viral marketing shakedown the other is up to 20. That number of biomarker shapes now I can see which have that by a number of biomarker take shape that Kappa should give a new subject. It may be that I'm aware of it that being a subject. Then over this kind of character he played the first transparent line if you had simply a black point there like carving out without just black building. There. And if they are within one of the shapes

then it referred to an idea about the subject of that shape. Favorite harmonies there was of course. If it fell outside of one of those shapes then you might do with the night you didn't have to do with any of those ideas. Then I took a seat which was transparent which had not filled in the circle jerk circle. I'm guilty. Now it went dark fell over and fell within the biomarker shapes they were not ideas but were rather startling about this very subject and I think there are those who say they were sorry about something other than stars. But. Then I had a meandering guideline. Where.

I could. Carry on one of the mind that from the whole complex. I could move it in February. The other put down enough that it would intersect one of our circles within one of the shape that I had a circle. Are transparent which in the case of music with regard was like that the circle of the watch and the very second. But since one can't say much in a second I had to be fair in this case the number of lines and then the grammar book. Now as that made me learn when to apply within the shape having to do with parts and then with intersecting other points and outside in stag's otherwise it all fell out with the end of this circle and made a neck that hard this time reducing their guy like how in music tiny factors.

Within the number of things that have been intersected way of point and circle. So weird thing to do within the amount of time and the number of things. Now within that number. But that's what happens. And that it is how this affects me. I wrote Tyler now are the principal characters in town. Taxes are the current architect of beautiful buildings in Vancouver market art and David curator musician without knowing my music and the music that Martin Gardner Christians were on to mention on the three with no money being not very bright but because that was when

he feels our way here. This act is not hard but is an homage to him. This was Britain in 1962 in Spain. And my ideas of change are not the way I write this tack and they represent many ideas which I hold dear and there's virtually nothing to say about rhythm for there is no time. We've yet to learn the rudiments of the useful means. But there is every reason to believe that this will happen and not over dead bodies. When I see everything that's to the right resembles everything that is to the left. I feel just as I do in front of something where there is no center of interest at all. Activity

business. Not of the one who made it his intentions had moved on to next to nothing. Perhaps a speck of dust. We are constructed symmetrically with the usual allowances for imperfection and ignorance with regard to what goes on inside and so we see and hear symmetrically that is. Notice that each event is at the center of the field in which we it is. This is not so much a Democratic point of view as it is equally obvious to crowd. We only object when someone calls our attention to something which we were about to see. Originally he mentioned

going back roof or to the side and combining this with the notion of progress. The house in Los Angles the others visited. They told about it and other people tried to get it destroyed and I saw our method it proved to be too great a source of income. She spoke of change in her perception of light. As I pick up my thought now I already know that it is going to slip through my fingers. Its very nature is to evade being caught. That is what God does not just this one. That things are in the fluent relationship of life and death. And death coming only to him who wins.

Nothing stops. Before leaving the earth altogether let us ask how does music stand with respect to its instruments. Their pitches the scales modes and rows repeating themselves from octave to octave. The cards harmonies and tonalities the beats meters and rhythms the degrees of amplitude pianissimo or piano and that's a phantom that's a forte forte fortissimo though the majority go each day to the schools where these matters are taught. They read when time permits of Cape Canaveral Ghana and school and they've heard tell of the music synthesizer magnetic tape

they take for granted the dials on radios and televisions sets a tarty art the art of music and why so slow. Is it because once having learned a notation of pitches and durations musicians will not give up their Greek. Children have been modern artists for years now. What is it about music that sends not only the young but adults too as far into the past as they can conveniently go. The module that our choices never reached around the globe and in our laziness when we changed over to the 12 tone system we just took the pitches of the previous music as though we were moving into a furnished apartment and had no time to even take the pictures off the walls.

What excuse. But nowadays things are happening so quickly that we become thoughtless or where we Clive Wyant and knew ahead of time that the need for furniture of any kind would disappear. Whatever you place there in front of you sits established in the air. The thing that was irrelevant to the structures we formerly made and this was what kept us breathing was what took place within them. There emptiness we took for what it was a place where anything could happen. That was one of the reasons we were able when circumstances became inviting changes in consciousness etc. to go outside where breathing is child's play. No walls not even the glass ones which though we could see through them killed the birds

while they were flying. Even in the case of object the boundaries are not clear. I see through what you made. If that is the reflections don't send me back where I am. But why argue. The Indians long ago knew that music was going on permanently and that hearing it was like looking out a window at a landscape which didn't stop when one turned away etc.. Some time ago counting patterns tempi were dropped rhythms in any length of time. No structure A.R.T.. It's definitely spring not just in the air. Take as an

example of rhythm. Anything which seems irrelevant. What's marvelous is that the moon still rises even though we've changed our minds about whether or not we will ever get there. Symmetry pure symmetry doesn't exist. He worked for several years and as he worked his technique improved but he preferred to keep the ineptitude to reveal that is not something perfect but something that showed that he had been alive while making it. And yet I know when I see something that at least makes the signs of symmetry that I am where measurements no longer have real significance. Like his flags and targets alphabets and the cans of ale

don't tell me it's a question of mass production is it not rather that they want to establish if not the rules of the game at least what it is that one uses to play with when he starts playing. There is no need for us to agree that play is what it is. Since in that case invention without which we might as well not have been born is a spoil sport. There was a time and I would not have minded living then even though I would not for any money change places with anyone past present or future. When in music there was a glimmer of perfection in a relationship between the unit and the whole down to the last detail so elegant. How did that come about. It was an object. It was an icon.

It was an illustration of belief. Now do you see why what we do now is not at all what it was then. Everything now is in a state of confusing us far. For one thing we're not certain of the names of things that we see directly in front of us but even if we don't know their names can we not take our rules and compasses and measure them. Now we cannot. Remember what he said about the tiger. And no again they have required the campers to leave the park because the fires in distant places were 16 in number. A. Ancient history tatami material tala. Structure open at both ends. I

saw rhythmic mo tat closed structure a rhythmic structure a micro macrocosmic in which the first part had that number of units of which there were subsequent parts. The total number of units being a square. The relation of small parts within each unit being identical with the relation of large parts within the whole close structure. The module are. Material. She told me she dropped in around 11:30 in the evening and he said why don't you stay for dinner. He's cooking she said was like a performance. There was no running about the room. Everything was mysteriously in the very place his hand reached when the need for it arose. The world in a grain of sand. Or is it the universe. And

vice versa. Yes but when we say as one artist to another the unit and its relationship to the whole. We speak of an object and it is well to remember that the only time the idea of movement on the part of this object entered his head except as a far fetched analogy to music in previous times was when he was forced to accept Evers into his calculations. Rhythm too is not arithmetic. He had not made mistakes. It was just that circumstances were overwhelmingly different than the idea with which he was attempting to cloak them and his idea actually he said was a tool and instrument not an object but it had in it all the elements present only as measurements. That the object once made was to have.

Thus it was not a tool for paper once cut is free of the knife which was used to cut it. Not a tool but an instrument like the piano which used leaves its notes scattered all over the music that was played. Was that not why it was necessary to change it. Otherwise we would have been faced with a project like that of the Pittsburgh maker of stringed instruments who wanted to sew fashion his cellos violas and violins. That one wouldn't be able to hear any difference in passing from one to another. The problem is more serious. We must dispense with instruments altogether. And get used to working with tools. Then God willing we'll get some work done. It can be put this way to find ways of using instruments as though they were

tools. That is so that they leave no traces. That's precisely what our tape recorders amplifiers microphones loudspeakers photoelectric cells it's true are things to be used which don't necessarily determine the nature of what is done. There are of cars pitfalls but so is one finger when he points at the moon. But we're dealing with is not things but minds. What else. We are now back on the ground on our feet. The cars can no longer pass over the bridge. Last week it was a case of uncertain footing. Quicksand. And before we got out plunging through the stream I remembered the story he told of their having to stop all together and they were not timid souls

symmetries not produced in music by doing something and then doing it backwards or by doing something and then something else and then back to what was first done exercise lying flat on your back your arms at your sides your legs uncrossed. Ask yourself among all the sounds I hear which ones are asked balance. There will be centrally located pulverised to Muzak plus. You claimed composition performed by listeners who do nothing more than go through the room. There are those who think or feel that it should never have happened but

disregarding them the others no longer say perhaps it would have been better had you cut it they say instead. I was just getting with it. Some say couldn't you have made it more effective. And when that comes about that has not yet been heard. Will we be able to say more are less than we can now about the unit and its relationship to the hole in the interior of that space. Open yet feels like a dish to the brim with sounds both gentle and terrifying occurring at unpredictable points not only in time but throughout the space too. Will it not be as it is today. Spring definitely here or is it summer finally outdoors.

Delicious sleep plagued by insects. Something to hear on all sides even back of me that anything we may think we will have had to say Will is now have somehow slipped our minds. His response to the question Was there seems to be a tendency toward the good. And what does that have to do with proportion. This that once the measurements are made not in rubber but in some inflexible material the proper relationships determine. Can you believe it. They managed to get an entire family out of the house simply because she raised two children in a way the other mothers didn't. A police farce is in order. I quote omissions and emphasis mine.

Concord between man and machine sensitivity and mathematics. A harvest of prodigious harmonies reaped from numbers. The grid proportions this hour will be acquired by the efforts of men of good will but it will be contested and attacked. It must be proclaimed by law. Art this is carved. Its shape is that of tyranny. The social inflexibility follows from the initial conception of proportion. The line they're drawn between two points becomes first web and finally three dimensional. Unless we find some way to get out we're lost. The Mark lasts I say the better not only the windows this year even though they're small.

We'll open up one whole wall slides away when I have the strength of our assistance to push it. And what do I enter. It draws me like a magnet not proportion. The clatter of the unkempt forest his music gave me the same experience. It was only once amplified and recorded on tape from the action of two people who for 20 odd minutes wrapped metal ashtrays against panes of glass. That is one way. There are as many others as there are people and there are more people now than at any other time in history. Now the increase in population is geometrical. Soon again it may be a question of simple addition. There is Argo no lack of ideas which we have not yet had. Why then do other people get his

ideas before he does a short circuit. Let them mend their ways starting wherever they are constantly from scratch. But let us list our reasons for having dropped all thoughts about proportion. First we are dealing not with the number two not with the number one. To during any one year the record proves it. We worked in at least two different ways. It took in some cases three or even four years unburdened as we were to drop those habits. 3 being slow witted musicians were able to observe the effects of stocks about proportion in the other arts giving them the responsibility to do otherwise. Unfortunately they were free of the problems

of architecture and civil engineering. The leaking roof and the collapsing structure. The problems of language and meaning of words and conventions of syntax. The problems of painting and sculpture are objectification for the process. Your subjectivity. My consideration of the activity of listening. We do our own listening. It is not done to us that to be directive must not be followed by any other activity farmed intellectual. Our uninformed emotional kinesthetic critical discursive. Thus making possible the transformation of experience which was which the sounds are by. So composition and had to be directive must not be preceded etc. until which was which but which is crossed out since nothing has yet been performed that is come into

existence. 6. We have found ways of composing indeterminately writing on sheets of transparent plastic which can be superimposed in any way. And 7 it took 3 years to realize the necessity. We have found that one notation is all that should go on a single such sheet. No proportion equals optimum flexibility equals any proportion. This brings to mind the Russian chicken's fragmentation we began by increasing the differences between the sounds making a clang Farben melody more and more we left openings in our space of time. What changed matters radically was the willingness to stop work altogether before the structure was complete. After that there was no longer any fixed structure just parts in any number of

superimposition and duration. Time sense changed. Now he says the permeation of space with the Copperhead strikes only one hunter. The others go on about his business. Again last night the bird was it blinded. Was that my purpose in killing it. He made an analysis of the sound of a gong and then in order to make a piece of music on magnetic tape drive the measurements from that analysis so that all the frequencies durations would fall from the. And even though anything can be done this project had to Stouffer's the other one did the introduction of approximations. What we are concerned with

now is quantity. We get quality automatically. But we don't want to be drowned by it. We insist on being able to feel as though nothing were there even though we can no longer count our possessions. If and I don't believe it anything like design took place before they put those rocks in those gardens of sand. Then it is high time one of us hunters takes time off to make a garden. Empty minded. What would it be something else to study. At this moment if proportion and such matters were uppermost in our minds harmony and beauty and all the rest of it we would desire no further change except we need some rain. Six fires yesterday so the 2000 were sent back to the cities they came from.

There was an indefinite whiteness sitting in the air around the trees and I was moving along at 40 miles an hour. If as is the case when I look at that building near Chicago I have the impression it's not there even though I see it taking up space. Then modular No module. It's ok but don't get me started counting sheep. What we musicians are expecting to discover is not how to stop counting. We've done that already. But how to dispense with our watches. It's true. I'm always asking him what time is it. It must be that eventually we will have a music. The relationship of which to what takes place before and after. No music is exact so that one will have the experience that no experience was had a D materialization not of

facts of intentions. We already have this. So there is no cause for alarm. But we want it in the future available everywhere just as it is already there begin to work. She had a goat. She no longer does. Now they have dogs and the plan to get rid of them. The cat which she's had for a long time has no mother instinct. They're going to buy a horse. Why don't they do as with the veal from the balancing rock near the top of the hill never bothering to see it. Proportion. A periodic rhythm admits of periodic rhythm. It doesn't work the other way around. That's why it has to be a periodic. No that isn't how the decision that it should be a periodic was reached. It

was thought that another expression was possible with its other rules and changed strict control was maintained. I'm speaking of the people on the other side of the ocean. The bird goes on singing repetitively even though the flies are buzzing at the window erratically and intermittently you know all of this and I do not mention the nine thousand nine hundred ninety seven other events. Where do we begin. If work consists in measuring. And if we begin say at any point do we measure each single event. How much time it takes or do we measure the spaces between events. Where there any are both the Northwest Indians began as though they had lost their powers of singing and dancing as though they were at death's door and then into them came other powers those of another. A bird or an animal. Full of the vigor of new birth. In this case no strict control was

maintained. The fire was not avoided. When the dancer could no longer move. Others came and carried him back to the place where he had been sitting. Those in Asia also began but meditatively as though they didn't know their own minds. The power of another and what other if as we needn't we give an image of it as they did with the drone for pictures and the proportions of a particular tower. What will we in our impartiality give. The others perhaps will cite Confucius and the Southwest Indians but even there the spider Goddess will not permit the passage of anyone lacking impurities. Apparently we are going north in our sense that is of what it is that we must bring in our arts into existence. He called it our Germanic and warned against the use of compasses.

I don't have one. The one I borrowed I only used once to draw the image of a watch which I trust won't be necessary again. I don't have one because I know perfectly well that once a circle is drawn my necessity is to get outside of it. We begin therefore without it. And it is getting urgent by the minute not to erase the clock but to drop the way we used it. To change the subject. What do I mean when I say he has no time sense. Shifting from one situation to another at appropriate moments. For this reason we made our work experimental unpredictable. First we use chance operations. Seeing that they were useful only where there is a definite limitation in the number of possibilities. Second we use composition which was in determinant of its performance. Characterized in

part by parts independently made by each performer. No scar. Seeing that that was useful only where there was a change of consciousness on the part of each performer. There we used performance which was determinant of itself. Chopping our way through the forest trying for our own sakes to give the impression that our visit never took place. Our minds are already changed and they know it. That's why they call us cold and dehumanised. But it remains to be done is to find out what tools are at our disposal and how to use them so that our objective is never seen in the distance. But rests continually inside each one of us so that whenever one goes as he will. In all directions at

once it with him will go polymorphically. They speak of evolution. Where is their sense of proportion. Talk talk talk. Is that what we must put up with. What is necessary is to listen to what you say so that the purposelessness of the listening can somehow get into what you're saying. He used the word latent and said that was when he was able to understand how in heaven's name did anyone get the idea that proportion took place in an object outside of him a little flexibility of mind. And one is able to see it wherever he looks. She objected to the position of the tree on the island and we all laughed. Not the perception of the proportions of sayings outside of us but the experience of identification with whatever's outside of

us. This is obviously a physical impossibility. That's why it's a mental responsibility. When we tell of something in our experience they answer with evidence to the effect that just the same thing happened to them. Conversation should be more affluent each remark unfolding unsuspected ideas and turns of thought where our sense of proportion was violated. It no longer is. Just as the most common variety of anything is nowadays a rare experience. We still have a few prejudices hanging around and even if we don't remove them ourselves dear friends come in and do it for us. A lot of my dealing with and when I deal with proportion going to the start to buy something standardization mass

production in containers. This was his most striking evidence for packing commenced the bills for distribution anywhere on the globe. But look closely this idea and each one of the others too in typical Mediterranean fashion is earthbound. The project is not about space but about packing things so efficiently that space is used. Examples are given for shipbuilding and one could certainly find others in the machines that today are but the earth. But I suspect that my father is right. That space travel will be facilitated by not going against gravity but by going with the field not the gravitational one but the universal electrostatic one. No great expense or force will be required one will in a wasteful American way simply move off into space inefficiently. That is with enough room in the vehicle so that he won't feel cramped during the journey.

Furthermore that wastefulness of space will be a seen a quite unknown size itself will determine whether or not the unforced journey is feasible. You might therefore say that we meet at another point the natural proportion. A law of nature. No doubt there is a threshold in all matters. But once through the door no need to stand there as though transfixed. The rules disappear. This is not far away from the world of High Fidelity which in its deadening search for perfection is unintentionally revealing to him the lively musical steps to be taken and in detail. Needless to say these steps are not only in the opposite direction. When you say do I often do don't they are in all directions. Whenever anyone speaks informatively with

precision about how something should be done Listen if you can with great interest knowing his talk is descriptive of a single line in a sphere of illuminating potential activity that each one of his measurements exists in a field that is wide open for exploration. Having this we find fertility in whatever is inappropriate. Providing it's practical. I mean we don't intend to just do nothing. Exaggerate the need for no ulterior motives. Consider success of any kind. A disastrous failure. Beware of losing what isn't in your head.

They apparently lost their sense of proportion. They blew the whole thing up and yet only presented a fragment the result is that nothing has the right size. An obvious mistake yet that they're brilliant people is proven by the original and useful arrangement of numbers for the days weeks and months. An analyst. Thank you.