Preface

Few artists of his eminence or his conversational brilliance were as generous with interviews as John Cage, who honored requests from undergraduate newspapers with attention and grace equal to those from slick magazines; and these interviews have appeared all over the world. Since they were individually incomplete, while most had elements lacking in others, it seemed appropriate to select exemplary passages, and from these selections to compose a sort of extended ur-interview that Cage ideally might have given. I decided to gather his choicest comments under several rubrics, and then order those comments as though they were parts of a continuous conversation similar to, say, Pierre Cabanne’s Entretiens avec Marcel Duchamp (1967). While these rubrics may violate the style and content of Cage’s thinking, they nonetheless serve the convenient function of organizing what he did not organize himself. Indeed, such structuring is perhaps a principal difference between talk and print. Though remarks as such may not be literature, conversation as provocative and elegant as Cage’s, so full of important ideas, often attains the quality we call classic. Admittedly, someone else could have chosen different nuggets from the same verbal mine, assembling them in wholly different ways. (And if they did, that result would be a book I’d like to read.) Even though I have been identified as this book’s “editor” (sometimes by academics who should have known better), I consider myself its Composer, for Cagean reasons expressed in the third epigraph to this book, and thus its Author.

Since we were making a new book, it was decided not to draw from interviews in previous books wholly devoted to Cage’s work: his own books, which are now over a dozen; my own documentary monograph, John Cage (New York: Praeger, 1970; London: Allen Lane, 1971; New York: Da Capo, 1991), which also appeared in German (Köln: Dumont, 1973) and Spanish (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1974); Daniel Charles’ Pour les oiseaux (Paris: Belfond, 1976), which at last count has been translated into English (For the Birds [Boston and London: Marion Boyars, 1981]) and German (Für die Vogel [Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1984]); Klaus Schöning’s Roaratario (Konigstein, Germany: Athenäum, 1982), which is bilingual; The John Cage Reader (New York: C.F.Peters, 1982), compiled by Peter Gena and Jonathan Brent; and Joan Retallack’s Musicage (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University, 1996). To these, as well as Cage’s work in general, this new book is both an introduction and a supplement. For some of its readers, it may, over a period of years, perhaps function as both.

Conversing would not have been completed without the cooperation of John Cage, who, perhaps because he saved so little paper, gave me the right and freedom to put his thoughts together and then checked the manuscript for errors and infelicities, to my gratitude, putting his own addenda between ostentatious dingbats (while mine appear between more-familiar brackets). Those recalling his meticulousness will be amused to know that he proofread the final text three times, trying to find a passage he thought dupli-cated. Eventually, he located it: It was the third epigraph—a quote from a Cage interview that also appears within this book—which I mentioned in this preface! This book depended as well on the cooperation of numerous interviewers, who kindly sent me their manuscripts and extended their permissions. Their names are printed at the ends of all passages drawn from their texts with the year identifying the date of original publication (unless the conversation happened long before); all questions are theirs, unless brack-eted. As no effort was made to change present tense to past, look to the end of the excerpt to ascertain when Cage was speaking. Further information about the interviews and interviewers is given in the appendices at the back of the book.

My fingers did the initial transcribing for the 1988 first edition on my Kaypro 2 computer; and just as J.S.Bach learned from copying his predecessors’ scores, so the experience of having Cage’s conversation pass through my hands was generally an instructive pleasure. (Thanks to ever more efficient text-scanning technology, it’s probably a pleasure no one will have again.)

I thank Richard Carlin for commissioning this new edition for the fifteenth anniversary of the original publication (and Cage’s ninetieth birthday, had he lived; now a decade after his death). Given the choice between seeing a book sell a million copies before a precipitous disappearance and seeing it reprinted more than a decade later, I prefer the latter. Josh Carr assisted in selecting material for this new edition as well as helping in the copyediting chain. Marc Dachy sent me additional passages that he incorporated into his Conversations Avec John Cage (Paris, 2000). Initially in French, these appear here in English with credit to their interviewers. Stephen Dekovich prepared a new index (based on Larry Solomon’s earlier version) in addition to proofreading the typeset pages. Formal acknowledgments appear in an appendix as an extension of the copyright page.

Richard Kostelanetz

New York, New York, 14 May 1986; 14 May 2002

I have never been able to do anything that was accepted straight off.

—Marcel Duchamp, in conversation with Pierre Cabanne (1967)

A mind that is interested in changing…is interested precisely in the things that are at extremes. I’m certainly like that. Unless we go to extremes, we won’t get anywhere.

—John Cage, in conversation with Cole Gagne and Tracy Caras (1980)

I can distinguish three ways of composing music nowadays. The first is well-known—that of writing music, as I do. It continues. A new way has developed through electronic music and the construction of new sound sources for making music by performing it, rather than writing it. And a third way has developed in recording studios, which is similar to the way artists work in their studios to make paintings. Music can be built up layer by layer on recording tape, not to give a performance or to write music, but to appear on a record.

—John Cage, in conversation with Ilhan Mimaroglu (1985)

CABANNE: How did you live in New York?

DUCHAMP: You know, one doesn’t know how one does it. I wasn’t getting “so much per month” from anyone. It was really la vie de bohème, in a sense, slightly gilded—luxurious if you like, but it was still Bohemian life. Often there wasn’t enough money, but that didn’t matter. I must also say that it was easier back then in America than now. Camaraderie was general, and things didn’t cost much, rent was very cheap. You know, I can’t even talk about it, because it didn’t strike me to the point of saying, “I’m miserable, I’m leading a dog’s life.” No, not at all.

—Marcel Duchamp, in conversation with Pierre Cabanne (1967)

Oddly enough, the interview [with Cage] had a profound influence on my life. I became very immersed in environmental work and the theories of Buckminster Fuller. I am still there, working in my own nonprofit organization seeking innovative (avant-garde?) approaches to social and environmental harmony.

—Geneviere Marcus, in a letter (1986)

Andy Warhol asked me if I would interview John Cage for Interview. I said, “Sure.” I telephoned John Cage and told him that Andy Warhol wanted me to interview him for Interview. John said, “Ha, ha, ha; that’s the funniest thing I ever heard.”

—Ray Johnson, in a letter (1987)