Location: John Cage's studio in Greenwich Village, New York

John Cage, the pioneering composer known for the use of chance in his music, was a close friend of Buckminster Fuller.
Cage, born in Los Angeles and now 77 years old, moved to New York City in 1942.
There he began writing music for the dance performed by Merce Cunningham, and broke new ground in the world of music with his efforts to use chance operations to free his compositions from the constraints of memory and taste. The music of Erik Satie, Zen, and the Chinese Huang Po doctrine of universal mind have all had a profound influence on Cage's work. "Music of Changes" (1951), "Four Minutes, Thirty-three Seconds"(1952) and "Silence"(1961) are among his more well-known musical compositions, and he has also authored a number of literary works. Cage and Fuller first met at Black Mountain College in 1948 and the relationship continued until Fuller's death in 1983. P3 interviewed him in New York recently, to learn more about the relationship between these two revolutionary thinkers.

Q: Do you remember when you first met Bucky?

A: I'm a very poor historian and I may make mistakes. But one of the important meetings that we had, whether it was the first one or not I'm not sure, was at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. That was summer session, it was then that he first made a geodesic dome, and it collapsed. It didn't work. Everyone was so sad, except Bucky. He was very happy. Because he said "I learn much more when I have a failure than when I have a success". He was a great man.
Besides bringing us his own work and giving lectures (that summer), he acted the part of the Baron Medusa in Satee's play The Piege de Medusa which we gave that summer. I was giving a festival with the music of Eric Satee and Bucky played the part of the Baron Medusa, Merce Cunningham played the part of the Monkey, and the sets were made by Willem de Kooning. It was altogether brilliant occasion. Elaine de Kooning was Freesette. Then I saw Bucky quite frequently after that. His work became very important for me.
After a trip I made to Hawaii, where I was invited by the university, which is on the south side of Oahu Island. And I lived on the north side and each day I drove through the tunnel through the mountain between the north and south. And I noticed that the top of the mountain was a crenellation just as though it was a medieval castle and I asked about those crenellations. And they said that formerly tribes on the north side were at war with tribes on the south side and they used those crenellations to protect themselves while they shot poisoned arrows down on the other side. But because the mountain is tunneled and they share the same utilities it's laughable to think that people who live so close together were ever at war.
And this was one of the principle ideas of Buckminster Fuller, was not to change man but to change the environment, and to change it specifically so that everyone would have what he needed, we don't want a world in which people on one side have water and people on the other side don't.... or electricity. We want it where everyone has shares. All the things that they need.... not excluding anyone. And if we come to such a situation it seems reasonable to believe that people will live harmoniously together.
I have since written a great deal, in my various books, proposing that the work of Buckminster Fuller and the work of Marshall McLuhan be taken as prophetic in a very realistic way of a new way of living on the planet. Marshall McLuhan was the first to speak of a global village and Bucky was the first to speak of spaceship earth. We're all living in the same place and Bucky never wanted to force people to agree with him, but wanted them to know that if they needed his ideas, that they existed. He offers to the world, which has so many difficulties now, the solution of our global problems. And in a way that doesn't involve politics. What we have to learn, hopefully, is that it won't be the strong who win but everyone must win together. So that we live in order to live, rather than in order to kill one another.
I, myself, think that one of our greatest difficulties, and Bucky agreed. I'm sure, is government. And the fact that we have, as he put it, I think 150 different sovereignties. We have 150 different governments, in one earth, which only needs no government. Henry David Thoreau, whose work is very important for me, wrote the essay on the Duty of Civil Dis-obedience and he says at the beginning that the best form of government is no government at all. And we'll have that form of government when we are ready for it. And I for one and I think you for more are ready for it. What we need is intelligence instead of power or selfishness. And we need an intelligence that embraces everyone. Particularly now when large numbers are sick from different diseases. Last evening I dined with a doctor who's just come back from Africa studying the AIDS plague; and the situation is almost hopeless.
They've now discovered that people who are actually ill may not know for more than 10 years, whether they are ill or not. So that the number of people who are infecting the rest of the people without knowing, it have no way of knowing it. We live in a time when we need a great deal of intelligence. Far more than exists in our governments. If you want my remarks to take a different direction simply ask me a question.

Q: What kind of impression did you personally get from Bucky Fuller?

A: A man of great courage, great energy, complete honesty. He said, you know after being silent for one year, "Now I will tell the truth." And ever since then he was speaking the truth. It's very beautiful. I often heard him speak both in home situations in public situations and he always gave everyone in the audience the feeling that he was talking to that person. We never thought that he was talking just to anyone. Each person thought he was the one being spoken to. He even gave you the impression that he was looking at you. Its sort of like the Indian God, Krishna, who was able to be with so many different people.

Q: We'd like to know how Black Mountain College itself could be define within the situation at that time, like 1948. Was it a very radical school?

A: Oh, yes.

Q: And it's really far away from any of the other schools?

A: Yes, it was formed by the professors from different universities who were dissatisfied with the institutions that they were in and they wanted to make a good college. They didn't want to teach in such a way that people would graduate. If the student wanted to graduate, they would bring professors from still other universities to examine them in order to let them leave. But the idea was to make a learning community. And for people to stay as long as they needed to stay and leave whenever they wished without any degrees, with no requirements. It's certainly the best school that we've had. It doesn't exist now you know.

Q: The subjects they taught were not only the arts but general subjects?

A: It was principally art because of the very greatness of the art teachers. Principally Joseph Albers who came from the Bauhaus in Germany. But the teachers who formed the school at beginning were not artists. But they asked for an art teacher and he was asking for a position so they came together by coincidence. And it became an important art school because of him. And then later he left Black Mountain College and went to Yale University. And in the midst of it Bucky came to Black Mountain.

Q: How did you become involved with Black Mountain College?

A: Well because I gave a program of music at B.M. in the spring and they enjoyed it so much they asked if I would come back that summer and teach.... with Merce Cunningham, the dancer. And so we agreed. They didn't have any money but when we drove the car away from where it had been parked all the students had put presents underneath the car. It was a lovely place, lovely people, but there was no money.
Now if you could make it again, people who have money would give it. But when it existed the people who had money wouldn't give anything. Now they would. But it's impossible to rebuild something just because you have money. They won't support something that needs it until it becomes famous, and the it's gone.

Q: So you mean it was too radical to get people to support it at that time?

A: At that time when they asked for money no one would give anything. Then when it collapsed because it had no money a few years later people began to say I will give so much money if you will rebuild it.

Q: Do you know why Fuller came to Black Mountain?

A: It became very famous, as the best school in the U.S., and his ideas were new and anyone who had new ideas was interested in Black Mountain.

Q: So he voluntarily came to the school?

A: I'm sure.

Q: Why did you choose the Baron Medusa for the summer festival?

A: Because the community was largely German from the Bauhaus in Germany and Satee is a French musician and I was enthusiastic about the French musicians. So the German people said "We can't listen to French music unless you tell us why we why we should listen". So I gave a festival of the music of Satee through that summer. And there were something like a hundred little short concerts after dinner. And everyone got to know Satee very well. Another thing I did that summer was to read a text which was very important for me from China, the Huang Po Doctrine of Universal Mind which is one of the books that led to Zen Buddhism in Japan but it was written in China. And that book we read around midnight one night. It's a short little book. And it was very important for many people who listened to that. It changed their minds. There was, in particular, a young man who I think was coming back from the war in Korea, and he didn't know what to do with himself and he heard this reading and all of his problems were solved!

Q: We understand that you and Mr. Fuller influenced each other and we'd like to know if you did any collaborative work with Mr. Fuller.

A: No, we didn't actually work together except in this Satee play where he was one of the performers. Later on, a book before M called A Year From Monday, I was composer in residence at the University of Cincinnati and Bucky was at the University in Carbondale in Illinois, and in A Year From Monday , it was the first book in which I wrote a great deal about his work. And I, as you may know, I use chance operations in my work. I try to free my work from my memory and my taste. So it seemed to me there might be a conflict between my ideas and his ideas and I didn't want to speak about him in a situation with which he wouldn't agree. It's hard to get from Cincinnati to Carbondale, it's a short distance but I didn't have the time to drive so I rented a small plane and I flew to Carbondale and the pilot waited for me while I saw Bucky and then I flew back. And Bucky looked at all the things I had written and agreed that there was no conflict between us. He said he was trying to make a world through his ideas that would work so well for everyone that they could live as I was suggesting. In other words, without intention, he was using his intention to make a world in which there could be the presence of non-intention. In other words it would be organized so well that it could be, so to speak, without government. I mean what we want is not that everyone eats chicken or soba, but that each person eats what he wishes. And the important thing is that everyone has something to eat. Now the air we breath and the water we drink, everything has to be changed. It's very sad in Russia where I was last spring for 5 days, they have very little food, very sad.

Q: We noticed that you wrote a diary called How To Improve the World was that a result of your interaction with Mr. Fuller.

A: Yes, and particularly that experience in Hawaii that I told you about. And I saw Fuller's work as the solution to the whole world, which he speaks of as a single island. He's made the earth so that you can see that it begins in, say, South America and goes through Canada to Asia and then on to Africa, so it's one island with a few exceptions. But the utilities could be shared by the entire earth, at not only much less expense but at much less use of natural resources. So that we're in the position of being able to support a very large population without the loss of the weak ones. Such as Malthusian thought said we ought to have only the strong ones. Who'd last, but can have some of the weak ones too.

Q: You started writing this book How To Improve the World in 1965 so that actually the interaction between you and Mr. Fuller had been taking place continuously until his Death.

A: He died so beautifully. Did you know that story?

Q: Yes, could you tell us again?

A: Yes, he was holding his Ann's hand and she was in a coma in the hospital and while he was holding her hand he died. And while their hands were still together she died. They died together. A question of maybe 2 hours. There was a beautiful service in Boston and in front of the 2 caskets was a picture of Ann and Bucky running in the woods together. It's so beautiful! He had thought that he would live to be 120. And he always gave everyone that idea and he was so strong, energetic that we thought that he truly would live to be 120. But then he died in his 80's. Unfortunately he didn't eat intelligently. He ate a great deal of meat and he should have been eating, if I may say so, macrobiotic food. (laughter) But he didn't do that. He also drank a great deal of tea. He didn't treat himself as well as he treated us.
Have you studied the work of Marshall McLuhan? In my mind, I connect Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan and perhaps I'm not wrong from my point of view, but I might be wrong from Bucky's point of view. But they were together at one of the architectural congresses in Greece, the Doksiadas. They were frequently together in the 60's. I thought that perhaps, they were so strong, each one, that they didn't like to be together. Sometimes that happens, for instance, with Gertrude Stein and James Joyce or with Stravinsky and Schernberg, they weren't together. So I even wrote recently when I wrote a text about Marshall McLuhan, I said that they'd met at least once, but I found out that they were often together in the 60's or the reason that other people connect them because of their concern for a global society.

Q: We were unable to find your book Themes and Variations. Could you tell us what kinds of comments you made about Mr. Fuller in that book?

A: It's not informative, because of my use of chance operations. So the parts that have to do with him spell his name. And the source material for those sections are 5 different sections. You're familiar with Japanese renga, well instead of there being 5 different poets, I wrote 5 different poems about Bucky, and then I mixed them up so they don't make ordinary sense. (laughter)

Q: So maybe even if we read it... (laughter)

A: You see what an influence Japanese thought has had. (laughter)

Q: It doesn't make sense to anyone?

A: It's marvelous. It makes the mind go in richer directions.

Q: For us it's an interesting collection of names in your book Themes and Variations, could you tell us how you relate to those 15 names, these people?

A: Well, for example, Norman O'Brian is a classicist and philosopher who knows a great deal about Finnegan's Wake. And Finnegan's Wake, you see is important because of H.C.E.. You know the principle character is "HERE COMES EVERYONE".... and that's the same as Buckminster Fuller, we must feed the entire world not just some, but everyone. And James Joyce had the same idea. Marcell Duchamp, who changed the world so that, well, everything in it is a work of art. Anything to which you give your attention, you are the one who finishes the aesthetic object. The work is not finished by the artist but is finished by the observer. So if an observer looks at something aesthetically he sees that it's beautiful. Wittgenstein, he's not among the names, but nowadays I'd put him too. (laughter) He said the word "beauty" means nothing. It's just that it clicks for us. You accept it. So instead you keep a clicker in your pocket and when you see something you don't think is beautiful you click it and suddenly it's beautiful. (laughter)
And Suzuki, when I studied with and then I visited him twice in Japan, once at Kamakura and once at Kyoto. And Toby, there's a Toby over there. And then there's my teacher Arnold Schernberg.

***Skipped part of showing book and using visual communication***

Q: With the group of 15 people in Themes and Variations, we see you in the center and the 15 people all around you but at the same time many interactions took place through you between, say, Robert Rauschenberg and maybe David Tudor?

A: All that happens in the way of relationship is by coincidence not by intention. And I'm not in the center. Rather each one is in the center. This is what Suzuki taught, each human being or each being rather is in the center, or each being is the Buddha. So we don't have to put one in the center.

Q: Is there any relationship between Mr. Fuller and the other people in the book?

A: Well, I think of one between Marshall McLuhan and Bucky.

Q: Oh, yes, yes. How about Fuller with Mr. Johns or Fuller with...

A: Yes, Jasper Johns made a beautiful map, which is now in Germany in the museum in Cologne, which is Buckminster Fuller's design.

Q: So did they meet at some time?

A: Well, there's at least the connection that he.... well... spent a long time painting the picture of the world. (laughter) He had painted paintings of the United States and I suggested well why don't you make one of the world. And he agreed.

Q: Ah, yes, and then he used Fuller's idea.

A: It's a beautiful painting. And very large, in Germany, it's worth seeing.

Q: Yes, in Cologne.

A: A beautiful museum there.

Q: We picked up TIME magazine on the way flying here and on the cover was a picture of the earth and of course Mr. Fuller had been talking about the problems caused by modern man's way of dealing with the earth and about changing those methods. Now everyone is becoming aware of the kinds of things Bucky was talking about, like even TIME is talking about environmental problems, global problems.
What do you personally think of the state of our planet earth today and what kinds of things you think we should do to improve earth's and man's condition.

A: I think, as soon as possible, we should do whatever we can do. Each person and each institution and each country, there should be no waiting to do the best thing that we should do everything that we can, I spend most of my time as a talking machine. (laughter) So, I'm giving the Norton lectures. At Harvard this year...

Q: Like Bucky did.

A: Yes, and my lectures are based on the work of Fuller, McLuhan, Wittgenstein, Thoreau, Emerson, and a man named Beckett. And I put this whole thing as a source material into combination with the daily news. In other words the international situation which is so bad, both for people and for things, for the air, for the water and so on. And in trying, in my way to bring people to some kind of action, I don't myself do that action because in now in a position, because of my work in music, in writing in which what I say is taken a little bit seriously. And so instead of stopping my work, I continue it. And I hope that people will give more energy and more use, will listen, perhaps I do the wrong thing but I try to do...

Q: Yes, we also talk about these things in the museum activities too.

A: Oh. It's all very good and I think it will happen. It will either happen because we use our intelligence to bring it about or it will happen because of some great disaster. That kills, say..., we already have the disaster but we don't see it. Some disaster have to happen which we can't avoid seeing.

Q: Actually we found a book called Synergetic Stew dedicated to Bucky for his birthday in which you contributed macrobiotic recipes. Could you tell us about uh... Is that some kind of suggestion to Bucky that he'd better eat macrobiotic food?

A: Yes! (laughter) Yes.

Q: So he wasn't really into oriental methods of taking care of his body or...

A: He didn't do it enough. He had so much energy. He used to make these long trips and start talking immediately. He was never tired.

Q: By the way did you have some sort of friendship with Isamu Noguchi?

A: Yes. We had a long connection. Because I wrote Seasons in the 40's and Merce Cunningham did the choreography and Isamu made the costumes and the decorations. And I saw him now and then for a period of 40 years. I was surprised that he died recently.

Q: Yes, we also planned to see him.

A: Oh, he loved Bucky too.

Q: You and people like Mr. Fuller and Noguchi etc. seem to have transcended nationalities years ago in your relations and in thinking about the earth as a whole and it seems only now that more people are starting to become more aware of and concerned about the condition of our earth and trying to do something about it. Do you think we still have time to change things or are you sort of pessimistic about it?

A: No. I think we must remain optimistic as long as we are alive. What else can we do? It would be foolish to live pessimistically. We go to sleep you see, and when we wake up we have optimism, because we get an energy from sleep that makes hope again possible. Not just foolishly, but really possible. There's also a deep inclination in nature to recover, I think that if you built for instance... If you covered the earth with cement, and let's say you don't pay attention to this cement, in a few years there are flowers growing there. There's a beautiful remark of a poet, E.E. Cummings, called sweet spontaneous earth. And the earth is... is...the whole intention of creation is to continue, not to come to an end but... it's a continual "re-birth". That word appears in Bucky's work over and over again. Regeneration.

Q: And also it's somehow connected to Buddhism.

A: Yes, yes.

Q: We find a great deal of connection between Bucky's work and.... Maybe he didn't study Buddhism but we feel there's a consciousness...

A: Well, I think there's a close connection between thinking and Buddhism, in a different way there's a close connection between emotion and Christianity. But there's less connection between thinking and Christianity than there is between Buddhism and thinking. So that you can have as I do a book say of Wittgenstein and Buddhism, though he himself was a Christian, but his way of thinking was more suggestive of Buddhism.

Q: Yes, that's very interesting.

A: But if you want something... I think, in the history Zen Buddhism, there's a great deal of what you might call theater too. Things that could appeal to the imagination. (laughter) I was going to say, for instance, that that's characteristically Christian, but I... there's probably an intelligence in Christianity and there's probably emotion in Buddhism too. (laughter) Suzuki used to say that there seems to be a tendency toward the good, and I never knew what he meant, whether he meant that the tendency was in us, or was it in life in general or where was this tendency towards the good?
(laughter) He may have meant every place. And it's this same tendency that could bring the earth back into good shape.

Q: Mm... Yes.

A: All we have to get rid of are power and greed. I think those are the two things, The greed for money that's so ridicules, because money doesn't do anything. The power doesn't do anything either except... what it does. (laughter)

takashi serizawa & rumiko kanesaka & michiko takagishi, english version: brian smallshaw, p3, 9 january 1989
www.p3.org/p3-light/JohnCageInterview.html