A Year from Monday: New Lectures and Writings

DIARY: HOW TO IMPROVE THE WORLD (YOU WILL ONLY MAKE MATTERS WORSE) 1965

This text was written for publication by Clark Coolidge in his magazinezyx Joglars, Providence, R.I. (Vol. 1, No. 3, 1966). It is a mosaic of ideas, statements, words, and stories. It is also a diary. For each day, I determined by chance operations how many parts of the mosaic I would write and how many words there would be in each. The number of words per day was to equal, or, by the last statement written, to exceed one hundred words. Since Coolidge's magazine was printed by photo­offset from typescripts, I used an IBM Selectric typewriter to print my text. I used twelve different type faces, letting chance operations determine which face would be used for which statement. So, too, the left marginations were determined, the right marginations being the result of not hyphenating words and at the same time keeping the number of characters per line forty­three or less. The present typography follows the original chance­determined plan. I have several times given this text as a lecture, first at Beloit College in Wisconsin, more recently (June 1966) at the International Design Conference in Aspen, Colorado. It was thereafter reprinted in the spring 1967 issue of Aspen Magazine. DIARY: HOW TO IMPROVE THE WORLD (YOU WILL ONLY MAKE MATTERS WORSE) 1965 I. Continue; I'll discover where you sweat (Kierkegaard). We are getting rid of ownership, substituting use. Beginning with ideas. Which ones can we take? Which ones can we give? Disappearance of power politics. Non­ measurement. Japanese, he said·, we also hear with our feet. I'd cfuoted Busoni: Standing between musician and music is notation. "Before I'd given the history: chance operations, indeterminacy. I'd cited the musics of India-, notation of them's after the fact. I'd spoken of zyxwv 3 direct musical action (since it's ears, not interposing eyes).zyxwvuts 2:00 A. M., Jensen said, "Even if you didn't like the results (Lindsay, etc.)/ we hope you liked the telling of it." Telling (?) of it! We were there while it was happening! //. Minimum ethic: Do what you said you'd do. Impossible? Telephone. No answer? My idea was that if they wanted to fight (human nature and all that), they should do it in the Antarctic, rest of us gambling on daily outcome: proceeds for world welfare. Instead they're cooperative down there, exchanging data, being friendly. April '64: U.S. State Department man gave Honolulu talk—"global village whether we like it or not"—, cited fifty­five services which are global in extent. Mountain range dividing Oahu, formerly crenelated (crenelations for self­ protection while shooting arrows), is now tunneled, permitting population circulation. Wars etc. part of dying political­economic structures. Social work equals increasing number of global services. III. AS McLUHAN SAYS, zyx EVERYTHING HAPPENS AT ONCE. IMAGE IS NO LONGER STREAM FALLING OVER ROCKS, GETTING FROM ORIGINAL TO FINAL PLACE; IT'S AS TENNEY EXPLAINED: A VIBRATING COMPLEX, ANY ADDITION OR SUBTRACTION OF COMPONENTS), REGARDLESS OF APPARENT POSITION(S) IN THE TOTAL SYSTEM, PRODUCING ALTERATION, A DIFFERENT MUSIC. 4 FULLER: AS LONG AS ONE HUMAN BEING IS zyxw HUNGRY, THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE IS HUNGRY. City planning's obsolete. What's needed is global planning so Earth may stop stepping like octopus on its own feet. Buckminster Fuller uses his head: comprehensive design science; inventory of world resources. Conversion: the mind turns around, no longer facing in its direction. Utopia? Self­knowledge. Some will make it, with or without LSD. The others? Pray for acts of God, crises, power failures, no water to drink.zyxwv IV. We see symmetrically ·. canoe on northern Canadian laket stars in midnight sky repeated in water, forested shores precisely mirrored. Our hearing's asymmetrical: noticed sounds surprise us, echoes of shouts we make transform our voices, straight line of sound from us to shore's followed by echo's slithering around the lake's perimeter. When I said, "Tifty-five global services," California Bell Jelephone man replied (September '65), "It's now sixty-one." Thezyxwvutsr seasons (creation, preservation, destruction, quiescence): this was experience and resultant idea (no longer is: he flies to Rio). What shall we wear as we travel about? A summer suit with or without long underwear? What about Stein's idea: People are the way their land and air is? V. When I said that culture was changing from 5 Renaissance to what it...