James R. Oestreich Variations on Chance, Anarchy and Silence, The New York Times, Sunday, 25 January 2004, AR 25, 2004, 1987, 1960
""Thoreau was very happy to be little known while he was alive. He said it enabled him to do what he had to do. I'm now very well known. It makes me very happy, because I'm able to do what I have to do."
"Thus a self-analysis of John Cage, rendered in 1987 in the brief film 19 Questions, by Frank Scheffer and Andrew Culver. Not incidentally, that response was 23 seconds long, as dictated by Cageian chance operations imposed on the interview. The other replies ranged from one second (on Octavio Paz: "Indian") to 48 seconds.
19 Questions is one of four Cage films by Mr. Scheffer and Mr. Culver on a new DVD from Mode Records (www.mode.com), From Zero. The others vary widely. Fourteen is Cage's chamber work of that name, played by the Ives Ensemble and filmed mildly chaotically. It is pointedly unconducted (by an 'unconductor") and undirected. Paying Attention reaps slim benefits from a filmed interview, with most of the speech slowed to a barely intelligible crawl and video as calculatedly jarring. Overpopulation and Art offers audio of Cage reading the title poem over his atmospheric work Ryoanji, and video shot near his homes, rural (in Stoney Point, N.Y.) and urban (Manhattan).
"Cage's inevitable preoccupations - chance, indeterminacy, anarchy and silence - play out in myriad ways. A 48 - second disquisition on conversations is, deliciously, mostly silence. Ultimately, haltingly, a lone aphorism emerges: "I think conversation works best when the second thing that is said is not in the mind of the person who said the first thing."
"The films were shown last week at a festival of Cage music and videos at the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village. The festival ends today with a full schedule of events, including a screening of Cage's 1960 appearance on the television game show, "I've Got a Secret." Indeed, for all that he revealed over the years, he had so many."
{Is a percussionist primarily a keeper of time? Did Cage keep time well?} {"incidentally;" coincidentally; "inevitable;" evitable; "chance;" "indeterminacy;" determinacy; "anarchy;" "silence;"}