If Cage left us with any worthwhile ideas (certainly in parallel with
and no less than Murray Schafer), it was the admonition to think
critically about sound, its origins, its reproduction, and ultimate
human transformation. For those of us not afraid to consider the
ramifications of these ideas -- wherever they may lead -- the dialog
between ourselves and those within the fold of the natural world will
continue unabated -- hence the subject of my recent book, The Great
Animal Orchestra, that clearly addresses the efforts of many important
contributors to the field...Cage but one of 'em.
I'm afraid that toward the end of his life, though, even Cage was
beginning to believe in the scope of his larger myth created mostly by
acolytes that had sprung up around him. Folks were ascribing quotes
that he had never spoken or written and he would buy into them as if
he originated the thought. Oh well...
Bernie
On Sep 7, 2012, at 5:35 AM, Michael Dalton wrote:
> Klas and others,
>
> You are all too intellectual for me. I am not an academic.
>
> My purpose for making my comment was based on a personal experience
> involving Cage and his work with sound. It was interesting to me as
> I moved from student to experimentalist in the sciences.
>
> Cage's performance is important to me because it brings back
> fundamental issues of interest to me. First is the application of
> language in an interesting and unusual discourse. Second, is the
> realization that most people do not actively listen to what they
> hear. Third, is our inability to do what is commonly referred to as
> "multi-tasking." A large proportion of people cannot process
> multiple aural messages simultaneously.
>
> All of these factors make Cage's work relevant today to sonic
> research. People had difficulty listening to multiple voices from
> sources at an instant in Cage's demonstration. I find people cannot
> discriminate a single voice beyond their normal range of
> comprehension. All this points to a rupture in the communication
> chain, and that is what I find. How will we ever be able to
> communicate with aliens from space when we can't communicate with
> other terrestrial animals capable of speaking our language?
>
> Mike
> Florida
> www.ParrotSpeech.com
> P.S.: Former girl friend married a Strandberg ...
>
>
> Re: Cage 100
> Thu Sep 6, 2012 4:51 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
> "Klas Strandberg" klasstrandberg
> Bernie,
> there is a substance in this philosophical discussion, but I feel
> that the beauty of the intellectual language hides the beauty of the
> message itself... hmmm. (Cage would have liked that..)
>
> Digits on a memory card are dead, as I see it. They are dead, and we
> have put them there because we have ways to make them "come alive" in
> a way that makes sense to our remembering of what it sounded in real
> life. (If we were there and could feed our brain with such a memory,
> that is.)
>
> What other people will hear, who were not there, is a totally
> different story.
>
> Platon saw a danger in the written word, as - if writing down things
> for later use - it would degrade our ways to memorize. He was right.
> I never memorize things any more. There is always Google...
> But has all my recording work in my garden made me forget what it
> really sounds like?
> Are my attempts to create a microphone that I love, "a vision of
> paralysis and death"?
> Hope not.
>
> Lawrence Johnson and Michael Dalton,
>
> what are your comments on this?
>
> Klas.
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> "While a picture is worth a thousand words, a
> sound is worth a thousand pictures." R. Murray Schafer via Bernie
> Krause.
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
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