The Past Will Eat You Alive_ and _Hail and Farewell_. My thanks to her for her generous help. And I also wish to thank the three men, who, at the end of our interview, kindly offered their perspectives on the subject matter: Paul Jurecky, who passed on his thoughts after I expressed my interest in doing a book on John Cage's life; and George Solt and Peter Yates, who gave me a sense of what it was like to be an assistant to Cage on a daily basis. Many thanks to Alexandra Parigi Abbate for graciously welcoming me to the George Eastman House; to Bill Coup, who has generously shared his wealth of knowledge about Cage; to Philip Brookman, who kindly provided photos, and most especially to Charles Amirkhanian, who offered me the chance to research his family's fascinating personal story. Thanks to Jennifer Baremore, Jonathan Coleman, Jim Higgins, Peter Hutton, Peter Schubert, and Chris Vadala at the John Cage Trust; the staff of the Center for the Book at the New York Public Library; Dr. Joseph and Cindy Cage, whose enthusiasm for the project is apparent from their letters to me; and to Cage's biographer, Tom Pich there, who was so kind to give me the gift of his time. Much gratitude to the authors, performers, archivists, and filmmakers whose works or advice informed this book: Richard Aldington, Joseph Arthur, John Ashbery, Jean Baudrillard, Robert Barry Bennett, Jonathan Berger, Jasia Reichardt, Michael Benedikt, Tom Barbash, David Breskin, Michael Broughton, David Caplan, Paul Chaat Smith, William Corbett, John Cage, James Campbell Cairns, Richard Cook, Jonathan Crary, Meredith Curnow, Joseph Czestochowski, Cyrus Curtis, Richard Dyer, Robert Flaxman, Robert Filliou, Peter Galassi, Stephen Gilman, Mark Godfrey, Paul Goodman, D. M. Grayson, Brian Griffith, David Halle, William P. Harrison, Cage's close friend, the poet Bob Hull, Richard Howell, Steve Jacobs, Philip Littell, Robert L. Lurtsema, William Manno, Robert Motherwell, Daniel Charles Moore, David Nicholls, Joseph Raffallo, Jack Reynolds, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Henry Flynt and Peter Hujar. Thanks to Mary Hunter for her expertise in tracking down the whereabouts of Bob Flaxman and the other participants in the Duchamp Circle of friends. My special thanks to Flaxman for graciously permitting me to use the photograph on the cover of this book. I thank my editors, Jonathan Segal and Andrew Miller, for their encouragement and excellent advice. And finally, this book has been enriched by my collaboration with the editors of the T. S. Eliot's _Selected Poems_ and _Selected Essays_ , compiled by the noted poet and critic Peter Quennell, which also provided the source of the epigraph for this book. # Acknowledgments An earlier version of "Eliot's Silence" was presented at a talk in the Poetry Series of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. My thanks to Paul Jurecky, who commissioned this lecture, and to Jennifer Baremore, who shared the stage with me at the invitation of the Guggenheim Foundation. In writing this book, I have relied heavily on my notes and my memory. The author has the right to edit his or her work under certain conditions. I have made certain revisions and corrections in this book; my editor, Jonathan Segal, did the rest. # Introduction "I never felt that I ever had a childhood," writes John Cage, who was born in 1912. "I don't remember thinking that anything was strange or remarkable about my life." Indeed, by the time he came of age, he was living in the midst of a historic moment in European and American culture. The modernist movement, in which his father and teachers were engaged, was in full bloom, influencing writers and artists as far afield as Cage's own hometown of Los Angeles, California. In Europe, the post-World War II period ushered in a remarkable new breed of innovators like Joseph Beuys, Paul Klee, Robert Rauschenberg, Allan Kaprow, Robert Ryman, Willem de Kooning, or Robert Morris—artists who shook off the dour shadow cast by World War I and the Depression. Americans too were responding to the new age. In the early 1940s, a group of artists in New York, led by Marcel Duchamp and James Johnson Sweeney, began to think in terms of the "ready-made," a term employed by Marcel Duchamp to describe his seemingly ordinary found objects. By the late 1950s, another generation of artists, this time in New York, was engaged in the practice of "happenings," in which the art making became less of an artist-to-audience production than a way for artists to engage each other in unpredictable ways. When the Cages returned to Los Angeles in the late 1950s, John's father, who had been an important role model, was already in his eighties. "I had to create my own new family, new friends, and a new life for myself," he writes. John began taking classes in Zen Buddhism, a practice that would be further developed in his work over the next few years. The Zen Buddhist idea of "beginner's mind" was also an idea that would pervade much of his work. Like many artists and students of Zen, Cage found that the Zen "beginner's mind" also applied to his study of music, in which he was now preparing to teach at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From the mid-1970s on, Cage was also experimenting with the sonic environment that, together with visual images, would become his subject of choice. In 1952, he had created an album, _Four Walls_ , which featured his first all-sound works, performed on the four walls of a church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Two years later he had produced a similar work, _Music for Amplified Toy Pianos_ , which included the famous performance _4′33″_ , in which Cage invited his audience to listen as the sound of wind moved in and out of his room. Cage's search for music and sound began at the turn of the century in a very different place from our own. He could hardly have known that the sounds he sought were about to burst onto the scene in the music of the day. When he wrote the first of his many well-known musical compositions, _Imaginary Landscape No. 1_ in 1952, it was in a style very different from the music he would produce in the decades to come. He composed this piece for violin, piano, and radio. A few years later he added piano to his _Imaginary Landscape No. 2_ , and his famous piano work, _Renga_ (1959), emerged shortly thereafter. Cage was intrigued by all the musical forms and practices of his time, but his fascination with Zen Buddhism did not allow him to remain a detached observer. As Cage's interest in meditation increased, he went on to become a student of Zen Buddhism, studying with the Japanese master Ruth Fuller Sasaki. While Cage was studying Zen, Sasaki was compiling her own book, _Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings_ (1935), which became a part of his library. Like Cage, Sasaki was also interested in the work of Marcel Duchamp. When she was in New York in 1948 to speak at a symposium at the Museum of Modern Art, she stayed at Cage's studio. Shortly after this encounter, Cage wrote a letter to Duchamp about Zen Buddhism and its impact on his work: "I have been following Zen [for] only two years, [but] have always felt that its teaching was closely connected with the work I wanted to do and what I did do." His letter to Duchamp also stated: "The time has come to think of art as a religion, to make work of the spirit's deepest need. In this thinking lies our future." The time for what? For Duchamp, it was an opportunity to turn in a new direction. Cage remained engaged in Zen for another ten years, but he continued to draw inspiration from all of his many interests. Duchamp, who had been Cage's friend for many years, had been influenced by the work of a number of other artist-scholars. When he was in Paris, he associated with artists in the Surrealist circle, read works by Freud and Karl Jung, wrote with Max Ernst, studied with the philosopher Jean Beaufret, and met with the writer and artist Robert Desoille. Duchamp was so familiar with artists in Paris at this time that he could have passed as an insider. When Cage wrote to him about the new directions his life was taking, Duchamp wrote back to Cage that it was all "exciting" and then took Cage to task for not making any friends: "How can you live without making friends? You