Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American Experimental Tradition

NONDUALISM AND COEXISTENCE

NONDUALISM AND COEXISTENCE Henry David Thoreau and John Cage Homme, libie penseur! te crois-tu seulpeasant Dans ce monde ou la vie eclate en toute chose! [Man, free thinker! do you imagine you think alone In this world where life bursts forth in all things!] —G6rard de Nerval ("Vers doreV') As the ocean so mysterious rolls toward me closer and closer, I too but signify at the utmost a little washf d-up drift, A few sands and deadleaves to gather, Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift. —Walt Whitman ("As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life") H lenry David Thoreau and John Cage depart from the experimental aesthetic views of Emerson and Ives in the following ways. First, they see humanity's relation to the world as nondualistic . Their experiments do not require human imposition,they simply require attentive observation. Second, Thoreau and Cage do not practice the tenets of philosophical idealism,- since humanity and nature are not separate, reality is not twofold and dual. Observation need not be interpreted; one may instead seek [29] to discover things "as they are." Thoreau and Cage experiment without presupposed hypotheses. Their version of experience is nondual; ideal and real do not need human reconciliation. Thoreau's two-year residence at Walden Pond is his most famous experiment, an "experiment of living": I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation , unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."x I cite this famous passage at length to demonstrate the openended nature of the Walden experiment. First, the experiment did not begin with a hypothesis but with a question: what is and is not life? Thoreau wrote about his experiment without the preconditions that normally inform a hypothesis. He emphasized disinterested observation, rather than comparing humanly predetermined conceptions with those discovered experimentally.2 In other words, Thoreau had no expectations of what he might find. Equally important is this passage's stance concerning value judgments. It is presumed that Thoreau will accept his discoveries regardless of the outcome. Truth is not ideally pre-existent; it is, instead, experientially present. [30] NONDUALISM AND COEXISTENCE Thus, Thoreau rejected the a priori acceptance of idealism. Even the metaphysical, if it is to exist at all, must be discovered through experience.3 The self does not mediate between physical and metaphysical worlds. In his experiment at Walden Pond, Thoreau sought to establish his place solely within the physical world. In the "Prospects" chapter of Nature (hisfirstbook), Emerson advised: "Build therefore your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions."4 In contrast, Thoreau wished to discover the world as it is, not as the human mind conceives of and shapes it. That, in fact, was his experiment.5 For John Cage, experiment was equally open-ended. In 1955, he commented that "the word 'experimental' is apt, providing it is understood not as descriptive of an act to be later judged in terms of success and failure, but simply as of an act the outcome of which is unknown."6 This was not always the case. Earlier in his career, he saw composition quite differently. Formerly, whenever anyone...