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Cage's Loft, New York City September 6-7,1990 John Cage andJoan Retallack I arranged to tape this conversation with John Cage for publication in the Washington D.C. literary journal Aerial. The editor, Rod Smith, was planning a special issue featuring Cage's work with language and demonstrating, via juxtaposition, its connection with contemporary experimental poetry in America.What follows appeared in Aerial 6/7 along with "Art Is Either a Complaint or Do Something Else" and a selection of Cage's macrobiotic recipes. Our conversation focused in some detail on poetic practice but, like all encounters with Cage, moved in many other directions as well. Cage's worklife and lifework were pragmatically and spiritually intertwined and interdisciplinary. At the time of this taping, wewere in the midst of the "Gulf crisis,"which had not yet degenerated into "Desert Storm." President Bush was still ostensibly in pursuit of a peaceful solution to the confrontation with Saddam Hussein of Iraq.—JR THURSDAY, S E P T E M B E R 6 JR: (Setting up tape recorder on dining room table?) This is an odd way to have a conversation, (pause) I've thought a lot about your statement "All answers are answers to all questions" and how that relates to the process of the interview. Have you thought about that? jc: I haven't thought about it, but we can talk about it. (laughter) JR: It seems that logic should dictate something other than the usual kind of interview. I thought of coming with a card game of questions and answers— where we simply shuffled and played. I'm curious;what would your reaction have been to that? jc: Well it's hard to know, but I would have followed what was happening. I mean I would have done what I was expected to do. (laughter) jR: What I decided was that it would have been my game and therefore inappropriate . jc: Yes.No, no, I think you're right. JR: Another thought I had was that we could telescope out or in—in perspective . I tend to start out wide-angled in my thinking. The order of thesequestions reflects that. But we could reverseor change the order at any time. jC: No, I'm perfectly willing to go with you. 43 JR: Recently I met M. C. Richards at the Quashas'.1 jc: She called yesterday, yes. JR: She's, as you know, involved with the notion of "Mother Earth"—doing things to heal the earth. Thinking about that metaphor—Mother Earth —in relation to Buckminster Fuller's metaphor, Spaceship Earth, in the context of the Persian Gulf crisis—how fragile things seem at the moment—I have some questions about the relationship between art and that fragility. Does, for instance, the gulf between mass culture and so-called high culture mean that no matter how smart or wise we become in our art, the life that is closer to mass culture, mass media, will always be in some sort of "gulf" crisis? jc: I think the nature of what you're calling a "gulf" crisis will change. I mean the specificities. I actually think—I'm saying "think" rather than "hope"— it seems to be in the air that the present Gulf crisis is already outdated. It doesn't belong to our time. JR: What do you mean? jc: We're moving toward a global situation. And this Gulf crisis has very specifically to do with nations. And Fuller already told us years ago—I forget the number, but it's something like 153 or 159 sovereignties—that our first businessis to get rid of those sovereignties, those differences. And to begin to recognize the truth, which is that we're all in the same place and that the problems that are for one of us are for all of us. There's no place to hide anymore. And there's no way to separate one people from another. JR: That's so "reasonable." jC: But I think the crisis will be the kind of crisis that will work globally, and then we will put our minds, like you were speaking about . . . we will put our minds to how to correct those things we really recognize without the clouding over of politics and economics. JR: So you think, though this is an old-style crisis, it may have a new-style resolution? jc: I don't know what the resolution will be in this case, but...

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