“Engaging in critical action accumulates virtue for those that act and somehow relieves them of any sense of them having to do something compositional.” –John Cage
Listening to John Cage discuss protest/critical action in the context of Buckminster Fuller’s studies on world resources is music to my ears.
I find myself rejecting the concept of a global society, but it’s interesting to think that, like the constant noise and TV screens in restaurants in public places, I need to embrace it and find something agreeable in it.
For me, with my limited responses, this feels like I have the choice to laugh at it, cry about it, complain about it, or withdraw and feel physical pain over it.
Laughing at it seems to be the healthiest recourse.
Mr. Cage speaks on how he faced critics when he started in music, but that their actions did not detour him from creating and distributing his music, even with no monetary reward involved – so why should a government cease committing any atrocities because of some critical voices.
Instead, why are we not constructing new ideas, new ideas, new ways of distributing the ample and abundant resources that this planet has to offer to the entire global community.
I’m reading the collected writings of Morton Feldman and one concept struck me as very insightful and practically helpful to my art practice:
Paintings are never done, they just get abandoned at some point.
The artist simply chooses at what point to abandon the work. At this point the artist dies and the painting truly begins to live its life.
It’s fun to abandon a work, it’s also fun to continue to layer and never stop working on the work. Art is a strange pursuit in this way.
I’m having so much fun with assembling pieces on wood right now, I’m not sure I can stop. I ran out of wood and used some cardboard boxes as medium, just to have an excuse to keep working.
My next challenge is to find a new sound space that I feel comfortable creating in that correlates with this assembled “compositions”. Finding the aural equivalent of fabric, house paint, and glue shouldn’t prove too difficult but composing in a way that is captivating and matches the speed at which time moves in our era is the question mark for me right now.
I sit here on my lawn, drinking chai tea, looking at my cats and my wife, not really caring what’s next.