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Cage's Loft, New York City July 15-17,1992 John Cage and Joan Retallack On the Saturday before we taped the following conversation, John Cage was mugged in his apartment by a man who claimed over the intercom to be from UPS. Cage was shaken by this experience but, not surprisingly, did not want it to interferewith anything scheduled for the coming week. In discussing the sorts of things we would talk about with respect to his music, Cage had told me he wished to concentrate on the way in which he was currently working, "So that I can find out what I'm doing. ... In the course of the conversation, we will discover things." He felt that James Pritchett's upcoming book1 would do a good job of dealing with his earlier music. The more recent work was what needed illumination. He said, "Before I begin to work I think I know something; then when I'm working I discover I don't know anything at all.What we are doing is finding out what it is we are doing." Our conversations, beginning on the fifteenth, and over the next few days, took place during the Summergarden concert series held in the Museum of Modern Art Sculpture Garden with Paul Zukofsky, Artistic Director in collaboration with the Juilliard School. The entire series in the summer of'92 wasdevoted to John Cage's music.What this meant was that we would be intermittently taping in Cage's loft, and making trips to MOMA, as well as to the sound studios at the FM radio station WNYC, which, in conjunction with the Summergarden concerts, featured Cage's music (a performance of ASLSP [1985] by Michael Torre) along with an interview by John Schaefer on the live program Around New York (July 17).—JR W E D N E S D A Y , JULY 15 (The tape recorder is turned on as we're discussing JC's need to be at MOMA at midday to supervise a sound checkfor the concert that night.) JR: (referring to the schedule for the next few days) . . . So we'll operate in our alloted time brackets, trying to develop illusions of infinite time in a hurry— jc: I haven't called the lady who's in charge of the publicity for the museum. I'm not sure of her number. I had a letter from her with the number, but I threw it away, (laughs) What I would like to do for the sound check is to be at the museum at 12:15. i. James Pritchett, The Music ofJohn Cage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 169 jR:O.K. jc: And then, the other appointment, either today or tomorrow—I don't know which—at something like 3115, is to go to WNYC. I'll check that now. (After we set our schedulefor the next two days, the talk turns to eczema, from which Cage had suffered for manyyears until a recent "cure." Cage says the treatment that brought about the cure was an outcome of Einstein's theories, which led in 1028 to the therapeutic use of a "superficial x-ray called a Grenz Ray.") jc: After sixapplications I was free of the disease... . Did you ever seethat awful play about the Marquis de Sade? jR: Marat Sadet jc: Yes. There were people in tubs scratching themselves, (laughter) Wasn't it awful? jR: There was a serialized play on TV about eczema, by a British writer who's chosen television as his medium, for interesting reasons actually . Because it's the medium that reaches the most people, so he chose that rather than theater. And he did a— jc: Democratic greed, (laughs) JR: The interesting, surprising thing—the pleasant surprise—is that his motive doesn't appear to be greed, but that the TV audience cuts across economic and class categories. He wrote a sort of tragicomic, dermatological detective musical. And it all happens because the central character, a writer of detective fiction, has eczema. [The playwright is Dennis Potter.] jc: (laughs) Oh really! jR : It's called The SingingDetective.And the writer, who is also the detective who sings, has horrific eczema. The show operates on many levels— serialization being an important one. It's delightful. Though, with your experience, you might find it unbearable. jc: I don't know. Maybe I'd enjoy it now. JR: (adjusting position of tape recorder) I'm going to put this where I can see...

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