John Cage Silence, Wesleyan University Press: Hanover, NH, 1961 (1973), 276 pp., 1912, 1949, 1978, 1982,
"John Cage was born in Los Angeles in 1912. He was recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for having extended the boundaries of music in 1949. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978. In 1982, France awarded him its highest honor, Commandeur de l'Order des Arts et des Lettres."
p. 88 "When I was growing up in California there were two things that everyone assumed were good for you. There were, of course others-spinach and oatmeal, for instance-but right now I'm thinking of sunshine and orange juice. When we lived at Ocean Park, I was sent out every morning to the beach where I spent the day building rolly-coasters in the sand, complicated downhill tracks with tunnels and inclines upon which I rolled a small hard rubber ball. Every day toward noon, I fainted because the sun was too much for me. When I fainted I didn't fall down, but I couldn't see; there were flocks of black spots wherever I looked. I soon learned to find my way in that blindness to a hamburger stand where I'd ask for something to eat. Sitting in the shade, I'd come to. It took me much longer, about thirty-five years in fact, to learn that orange juice was not good for me either."
p.263 "One when I was a child in Los Angeles I went downtown on the streetcar. It was such a hot day that, when I got out of the streetcar, the tar on the pavement stuck to my feet. (I was barefoot.) Getting to the sidewalk, I found it so hot that I had to run to keep from blistering my feet. I went into a five and dime to get a root beer. When I came to the counter where it was sold from a large barrel and asked for some, a man standing on the counter high above me said, "Wait, I'm putting syrup and it'll be a few minutes." As he was putting in the last can, he missed, and spilled the sticky syrup all over me. To make me feel better, he offered a free root beer. I said, "No, thank you.""
p. 264 "Coming back from an all-Ives concert we'd attended in Connecticut, Minna Lederman said that by separating his insurance business from his composition of music (as completely as day is separated from night, Ives paid full respect to the American assumption that the artist has no place in society. (When Mother first heard my percussion quartet years ago in Santa Monica, she said, "I enjoyed it, but where are you going to put it?") But music is, or was at one time, America's sixth-largest industry-above or below steel, I don't remember which. Schoenberg used to say that the movie composers knew their business very well. Once he asked those in the class who intended to become professional musicians to put up their hands. No one did. (Uncle Walter insisted when he married her that Aunt Marge, who was a contralto, should give up her career.) My bet is that the phenomenal prices paid for paintings in New York at the present time have less to do with art than with business. The lady who lived next door in Santa Monica told me the painting she had in her dining room was worth lots of money. She mentioned an astronomical sum. I said, "How do you know?" She said she'd seen a small painting worth a certain amount, measured it, measured hers (which was much larger, multiplied, and that was that."
p. 273 "When the depression began, I was in Europe. After a while I came back and lived with my family in the Pacific Palisades. . . .
"About a year later, the family had to give up the house in the Palisades. Mother and Dad went to an apartment in Los Angeles. I found an auto court in Santa Monica where, in exchange for doing the gardening, I got an apartment to live in and a large room back of the court over the garages, which I used as a lecture hall. I was nineteen year old and enthusiastic about modern music and painting. I went from house to house in Santa Monica explaining this to the housewives. I offered ten lectures for $2.50. I said, "I will learn each week something about the subject that I will then lecture on." . . .