Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

madoherty wrote:

I promised myself that I would created a thread on ma for mother's day:

Lodro wrote:

radi0gnome wrote:

silence

Ah yes, John Cage invented that little thing didn't he? Takes just over 4 minutes I think

Interesting the commonality between what Cage spoke of and ma (but also Japanese aesthetics in general), particularly in that he and Watazumi shared ideas at least on one occasion.  I think that many people mis-understand what Cage was after in his portrayal of "silence" in his music, forgetting that his "silence" was rife with the incidental sounds of the listener's surroundings (and this was the goal for his 4'33 piece).  I am not certain that ma would be the same as this, being defined, in my understanding, as the space between events.  Cage was after a different aesthetic... closer to Watazumi's "one sound" than a theoretical "ma", although perhaps similar empirically.

It sounds to me - from what you're saying -  that Ma is in fact more closely correlated with the Chinese 'wu chi' (nothingness - potential) as opposed to that Cage-ian tradition (also Satie, Eno and other people (Charles Ives?) where the 'silence' is in fact a 'space' where one is freed up to let other stimulae enter your focus that previously might have been ignored. Am I close at all, or on another planet?

Just happened upon this video of Mr. Cage giving a little manifesto on sound:

"John Cage about Silence" (he's not really talking about silence, per se, but sound, and what it means, or doesn't mean, to him):

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y

Worth a listen

Lodro wrote:

edosan wrote:

Just happened upon this video of Mr. Cage giving a little manifesto on sound:

"John Cage about Silence" (he's not really talking about silence, per se, but sound, and what it means, or doesn't mean, to him):

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y

Worth a listen

Mr Cage never fails to amaze me! He has a way of reminding one of something we probably once knew, that we might now have forgotten about.

As much as I also admire and respect Mr. Cage, I must aver that the opposite of what he says is also true: If sound (and the absence of sound, concatenated with it) did not have meaning to us, we would surely be lost. It'd be like the eye, not being able to see ANYthing, for seeing EVERYthing, as the same. We might as well be blind. It seems to me that it's only by sound having meaning that we can then step outside of it and regard it as Mr. Cage does, as a pleasant construct in its own right. Then we must go back home and give it meaning again...

[My impression is that] Cage was so into listening, the experience of sound, that meaning by the performer/composer was a distraction, contrived, and superfluous to the experience.  Rules that govern the way music should be put together had little place for him, outside of what sounded good, or what chance brought to the table.  Sound and music was obviously, and intensely, meaningful to him, but for him it is within the listener where meaning is created.  I do think that he was talking about himself, his experience, and not making an epistemological judgment on music, but maybe pointing to a place in which meaning is created that is different than what we usually think.

Cage was a Modernist, reacting in some was to the Romantic era.  The environment in which he learned his craft was bursting at the seems with large orchestral work by composers who wanted to paint a BIG picture of... whatever.  It is somewhat difficult to look back at what he was doing after being influenced by the Modernists, and now having moved onto a point in the post-Modern, or even Neo-Post-Modern, and still get where he was, and from where he was speaking from.

The question of meaning and music in regards to Cage is not different from a man I knew once who was so enthralled with Nature and Science (to the point of being religious / spiritual about it) that he says that he no longer concerns himself with questions of super-nature (G.O.D. / religion, etc).

Last edited by madoherty (2009-05-06 21:59:34)