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Empty Duration and the Generosity of John Cage

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Empty Duration and the Generosity of John Cage Empty Duration and the Generosity of John Cage Kay Larson I was almost 40 years old before I discovered what I needed— in Oriental thought. It occupied all my free time . I was starved—I was thirsty. John Cage ike some ancient rune, a yellowed page of ordinary unlined paper, flat and mute, sat inside a glass case in the exhibition Robert Rauschenberg: Among L Friends, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2017. This odd artifact, which comes from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, bore seven short lines in John Cage’s handwriting: Projector: Begin at 16 min Play freely until 23 min Begin again at 24:30 Play freely until 35:45 Begin at 38:20 Play freely until 44:25. MoMA’s label identified this object as a “time score” for Theater Piece No. 1, which Cage created at Black Mountain College in August 1952. (I have retained MoMA’s updated spelling of the title.) The label said: “The scores designated a start and stop time, but left it up to the performer to decide how to fill the interval. This is the only surviving document from the event.” It should be regarded as a national treasure. So much contemporary art started right here, with this single sheet of paper (and others like it). But translation is necessary. I propose that the deepest meaning of this Cageian rune turns on that repeated phrase: “Play freely.” From December 1950 on, Cage invented new forms of performance that replaced “personality” (self-expression) with Possibility. The 78 PAJ 119 (2018), pp. 78–84. © 2018 Kay Larson doi:10.1162/PAJJ_a_00407 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj_a_00407 by guest on 29 September 2021 most precedent-shattering forms, such as chance, silence, indeterminacy, pro- cess, distribution throughout a field, and one I’m calling “empty duration,” are Cage’s impassioned response to teachings he heard from an important Japanese Zen scholar, Daisetz Teitaro (D.T.) Suzuki. Cage then gave these forms away to anyone who wanted to use or adapt them. Artists who borrowed Cage’s forms unknowingly imported into their own work a Buddhist epistemology that was unlike anything ever seen in the arts of the West. Perhaps this “stealth” aspect is the reason why Cage’s inventions proved to be so new and so difficult to fathom, even now. In MoMA’s exhibition, a brown floor-to-ceiling projection screen presented a sequence of quotes—drawn from comments by Cage, or by witnesses or partici- pants in Theater Piece No. 1—that arose as paragraphs of text in blue-white light. As one observation faded away, another appeared, then another, and another. Layered and sometimes contradictory, these reminiscences skillfully evoked the ephemeral instability of memory and the textural weaving of multiple observa- tional viewpoints. A paragraph by Cage floated up: “During periods that I called time brackets, the performers were free within limitations—I think you would call them compartments—compartments which they didn’t have to fill, like a green light in traffic. Until this compartment began, they were not free to act, but once it had begun they could act as long as they wanted to during it.” From poet M.C. Richards, who took part in the Black Mountain event: “As we came in, we were given a piece of paper that had the time on it—32” or 4’00”— for those of us who were performing, but how I knew what that time was, I can’t remember.” From David Tudor, Cage’s friend and collaborator, and also a participant: “Almost certainly John had a plan, but I don’t recall seeing it. This has happened many times over the years with people he wants to work with. He distributes a plan that you can use or not, but it’s just a piece of paper with some numbers on it. This kind of thing doesn’t get documented, and it gets lost.” Cage called these “green light” intervals “time brackets” or “compartments,” but their main characteristic is that they are durations: passages of time. Why do I call them empty? Empty of what? We humans write numbers onto the seamless flow of our experience. If a train leaves Philadelphia at 4:44 in the afternoon, that’s just a marker inscribed on the ceaseless arising of being and becoming. The train could as easily leave at 3:33, or at 10:10, or at no particular time. The human mind has imposed these numbers onto cosmic flux (OMG the train is leaving at 4:44! I’m late!! Now LARSON / Empty Duration and the Generosity of John Cage 79 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj_a_00407 by guest on 29 September 2021 what!!!). And we throw a lot of emotion at the durations we create. But what’s real? Just the train, leaving. Cage began to work with Merce Cunningham in 1942. Four years earlier, Cage began serving as accompanist at the Cornish School in Seattle, where he met the brilliant young dance student. The success of the future Cage/Cunningham partnership is widely known now, but it’s important to point out how strongly Cage influenced Cunningham, and in what ways. Cunningham had joined Martha Graham’s dance company in 1939 and was performing in roles full of melodrama and story. Graham’s tastes were anathema to Cage, who had strong convictions about how he wanted to work with Cunningham. He convinced Cunningham to make a dance out of ordinary actions, like the way a cat leaps onto a couch or a person steps off a curb. And he sought a way for both men to work together yet remain independent. Cage didn’t want his music to illustrate the dance, nor did he want Cunningham’s choreography to be constrained by the music. His solution was to divide performance time into intervals. Each man would do his own work, separately, for the duration specified. When music and dance were joined on stage for the first time, something fresh and unexpected happened. But this was a rather mechanistic solution, compared to what would come next. Through the 1940s, Cage had been tortured by wor- ries and fears that brought him close to a breakdown. His marriage was falling apart and the emotional side of his partnership with Cunningham was uncertain. In this state of painful disequilibrium, one of D.T. Suzuki’s first teachings hit Cage like a rocket loaded with enlightenment. Suzuki gave a lecture on the human mind. He turned to the blackboard and drew a freehand oval, a bit like an eggshell in outline. This is the ego, Suzuki said. The ego regards itself as separat —the boundary that defines I-me-mine. In fact, Suzuki said, the chalk “eggshell” is fragile and permeated by everything. The “ego shell” is just a story we tell ourselves, Suzuki said. We construct a self and carry it with us and it colors our experience. If you see the ego as it really is—empty of any actuality—then you are freed from the ego’s tyranny. When we let go of ego, what’s left? Suzuki’s answer: everything. The whole world arises: it’s always been there, but now we are noticing it. In Buddhist terminol- ogy, the form world is inseparable from emptiness (shunyata, in Sanskrit) and emptiness is inseparable from form. Shunya, “zero,” is the shorthand for this “nothing” out of which everything arises. Nothing and everything are absolutely intertwined. What could hinder you? In that case, play freely. 80 PAJ 119 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj_a_00407 by guest on 29 September 2021 Top: John Cage, Projector Score for Theater Piece No. 1. The Projector Score is the only remaining “score” for Theater Piece No. 1, performed at Black Mountain College in August 1952. Copyright © 1960 by Henmar Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by kind permission of C.F. Peters Corporation. Holograph, “Projector [Black Mountain piece], Projector Timing,” Music Division, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Bottom: Installation view of Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 21-September 17, 2017. Copyright © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art. The floor-to-ceiling projection wall, in the first room of the exhibition, presented a series of lighted quotations from performers and audience members remembering Theater Piece No. 1 after its first performance at Black Mountain College in 1952. The glass case that held Projector Score for Theater Piece No. 1 stood between the projection wall and two paintings by Rauschenberg. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. LARSON / Empty Duration and the Generosity of John Cage 81 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj_a_00407 by guest on 29 September 2021 Installation detail: A sampling of the texts that appeared on the projection wall at Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends. The various (and often contradictory) accounts by participating students and faculty were assembled by Jessica Bell Brown and Jennifer Harris, and animated in collaboration with the Graphic Design department at the Museum of Modern Art. Screen text photos courtesy Kay Larson. 82 PAJ 119 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj_a_00407 by guest on 29 September 2021 In 1951, Cage gave a talk for artists at The Club in Greenwich Village. Alight with joy and revelation, he said: We are in the presence not of a work of art which is a thing but of an action which is implicitly nothing.
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