I-VI

Rating:
Summary: peRformAnce coMbusTiOns of fragments,WoRdS
Review: The various books, collections of pieces, essays, mesostics, cooking recipes,concert reports and performance works Cage had published throughout his long life have for many been more important than his music. (Cage never claimed) to have written music only/merely creating a more intense/extense hearing situation. He (himself when queried said) he never listens to music,recordings,but the sounds (as we all know now) that are all around us.Marvelous textures./ We simply need the committment to listen,to be committed to unitentionality,purposelessness. It is where divine intwervention/ inspiration or something similar an import which may or may not occur/possibly.

This rather large work "I - VI" is the summary/documentation of the prestigious Norton Lectures Series from 1988-89 at Harvard University. Time was when Cage was considered a joke by many, But now he is an American icon,honored/revered at every established citadel of academia.

Mesostics(which is the primary pages here)(pages 9 to 420) is(are) a kind of writing(of poetry)(esSays)(performance), it is as close the (English language) can get to Japanese,reading verticaly as well as horizontally. And that is what you need to do here most of the time,for sometimes a key word will run like a spine down the center of the page making some(or not) coherence with the remaining fragments you may(or may not) encounter. These (six(VI) sections) are like a performance (work),read in any order and any amount of it/ I found myself reading the particles of and complete words aloud for pleasure, skipping, letting (my eye) wander freely across the page, for non-meaning, or simply a combination and admixtures,combustions and consonant explosions which I've never encountered before. Whether (that is the correct) way is beside the point, for if you are looking for discrete meanings, well you will find it in bleak,cold fragmentariness. There are passages on the very bottom of each page, the question and answer section, where you may learn particular ways of playing Cage's sometimes rather difficult music. You never (improvise in) Cage, actually there is very little performing freedom. Once you understand a performing corridor or process you cannot digress from it. I found myself instantly at the bottom of the page most of the time,for Cage is an interesting storyteller, and a way of highlighting (actual) experiences from life.

There is an (orange) CD that accompanies this book A reading of mesostic(by John Cage)number 4/ IV. Cage speaks/recites in a frail baritone/ rich voice/ committed to the cause.

WriTings drawn from WitTgenstein( a laTe interest),Thoreau,Joyce,McCluhan and daily newspapers are combined in fifteen compositional meThods/strucTurs/intenTion/discipline/noTation/indeTterminacy/interpeneTraion/imiTationT/all this comes at the end and can be read lefT to riGht.