Begin Again, A Biography of John Cage

432 Pages·2016·4.47 MB·English

by  Silverman Kenneth

ALSO BY KENNETH SILVERMAN
Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse Houdini!!! The
Career of Ehrich Weiss Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending
Remembrance The Life and Times of Cotton Mather A Cultural History of the
American Revolution
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2010 by Kenneth Silverman
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books,
and the colophon are
registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Silverman, Kenneth.
Begin again : a biography of John Cage / by Kenneth Silverman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59457-0
1. Cage, John. 2. Composers—United States—Biography. I. Title.
ML410.C24S64 2010
780.92—dc22
[B] 2010009525
v3.1
In memory of my friend Stuart Feder
(1930–2005)
The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles.
—J. HECTOR ST. JOHN CRÈVECOEUR
Letters from an American Farmer (1782)
… it is a country of beginnings …
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Young American (1844)
Beginning was all of living with him, in a beginning he was always as big in his feeling as all the
world around him.
—GERTRUDE STEIN
The Making of Americans (1925)
I try over and over to begin all over again.
—JOHN CAGE
18 S 1977
MESSAGEGRAM OF EPTEMBER
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraphs
1. COMES UP FAMOUS
2. THE ART OF NOISE
3. EAST AND WEST
4. MUSIC OF CHANGES
5. THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS
6. INDETERMINACY
7. FRACTURES
8. HPSCHD
9. EMPTY WORDS
10. APARTMENT HOUSE
11. CHANGES AND DISAPPEARANCES
12. TIME BRACKETS
13. EUROPERAS
14. ANARCHIC HARMONY
15. 1992
DOCUMENTATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
TRACK CREDITS
About the Author
1. COMES UP FAMOUS
—headline, Los Angeles Times
1912–1937
The Cage Family; Los Angeles High School; Pomona College
JOHN CAGE’S achievement, the Times observed, was “a matter of pride to
the people of California.” A front-page photo showed Cage waving to ten
thousand spectators who had gathered to cheer him, including the mayor of Los
Angeles. Telegrams announcing his triumph had been sent to President
Woodrow Wilson.
Coming up famous on June 11, 1913, John Milton Cage and his crew of
five had stayed underwater more than twenty-four hours, doubling the world
record for submergence. The seventy-five-foot-long vessel—named Peace
Keeper—had been built under his patents, as general manager of the Los
Angeles Submarine Boat Company. When tested six months earlier, the Peace
Keeper sank due to shifting ballast and an open hatchway. It had to be raised off
the bottom of Los Angeles Harbor and dragged through mud back to its slip, to
be pumped out.
The Times assessed the launching of “the Cage submarine” as “one of the
most important events that has ever occurred in California or the entire country.”
It was believed in Washington that submarines would be key weapons in future
wars (such perhaps as World War I, to break out one year later). And Cage had
invented novel devices to keep his sub level, increase its speed, and greatly
improve its safety by running the engines on gasoline rather than potentially
explosive storage batteries. A rear admiral of the U.S. Navy predicted that it
would replace all other submarines in use. Not to mention, as John Cage boasted,
that his Peace Keeper was the only sub in which the underwater crew could
smoke.
About twenty-seven years old at the time, John Milton Cage had been born
in Los Angeles, the son of a Methodist minister. His formal education ended
with graduation from a high school in Denver. As he later wrote, he remained
concerned with “radical advances in thinking,” with overthrowing “traditional
patterns … we have acquired through years of hard work at school.” At a church
in Denver he had met his wife, Lucretia, known as Crete. A diminutive, dark-
haired woman, a few months older than her husband, she had been married once
before, possibly twice. Much concerned with genealogy, she traced his ancestry
to pre-Revolutionary Virginia, and her own Iowa family to Daniel Boone. The
couple had had a child, whom they named John Milton Cage. But he survived
only two weeks. Then on September 5, 1912—about nine months before the
triumph of Peace Keeper—Lucretia gave birth in Los Angeles to another son.
The couple again named him John Milton Cage, Jr.
John Cage, Sr. (photo credit 1.1)
Lucretia Cage (photo credit 1.2)
Cage Jr. and his parents moved several times during his childhood and
youth. For a while John Sr. took the family to Detroit, where he worked on
automobiles and patented some improvements for internal-combustion engines.
While in Michigan, Crete sustained her interest in the American past by starting
a Lincoln study club. Mostly the family lived in various parts of Southern
California—Long Beach, Santa Monica, Ocean Park.
Young John Cage, Jr., was smart, sensitive—and inventive. At Ocean Park
he spent mornings on the beach building roller coasters in the sand, with tunnels
and inclines on which he could roll a small rubber ball. He was also pious. When
the family moved to a vine-covered bungalow in Eagle Rock, an elevated part of
Los Angeles, Lucretia’s parents lived with them. Cage remembered his
grandmother as a “very self-righteous” woman whose main question in life was
“are YOU ready for the second coming of the Lord.” After dinner, before going
to bed, he read Bible verses with her.
Such reading played a part in young Cage’s early education. He later
remembered his time spent in elementary school as dismal. A precocious boy, he
got beaten up by other children in his grade, who considered him a sissy. For
religious reasons he never defended himself, taking seriously the injunction to
turn the other cheek. His musical education began at about the time he reached
fifth grade. When living in Santa Monica he took piano lessons from a nearby
teacher. When the family moved close to Glendale, they bought him a piano and
he studied with his mother’s sister, Aunt Phoebe James. A singer, pianist, and
piano teacher, she taught him to sight-read. She held recitals at which her
students performed ‘Pianologues.’ Costumed, they played and at the same time
read aloud a short story. For a while John Jr. imagined devoting his life to
performing the piano works of Grieg, which he found not too difficult, and
loved.
In his early teens, during the mid-1920s, Cage Jr. grew seriously interested
in radio. He was not alone. His father invented a crystal set that could be
plugged into an ordinary electric light system; the 1926 Los Angeles city
directory listed him as a “radio engineer.” The same years also brought the
organization of the National Broadcasting Company and the first international
radio broadcast, between London and Maine. John Jr. got the idea of hosting a
radio program for the Boy Scouts. A Tenderfoot himself, he obtained permission
from the organization and the approval of station KNX to broadcast a weekly
show Friday afternoons. The performing Scouts spoke about their experiences
building fires and tying knots. They also sang, John Jr. sometimes accompanying
them on the piano. Now considering himself destined for the ministry, he began
each program with an inspirational ten-minute talk by some minister, rabbi, or
other notably religious person. During the two years his show stayed on the air,
the volume of fan mail increased every month.
Already a serious reader, John Jr. refined and expanded his literary interests
as he graduated to Los Angeles High School. His Latin teacher reportedly
praised the excellence of his translations of Virgil. He studied some Greek as
well, and became a contributing editor of the school’s French newspaper. As a
senior he represented Los Angeles High in the Southern California Oratorical
Contest at Hollywood Bowl. His clear, effective speech concerned relations
between the United States and Latin America, a subject much in the news. In
1925, U.S. troops entered the Panama territory to quell a labor revolt; next year
marines landed in Nicaragua to subdue an insurrection. Cage Jr. argued that
Uncle Sam had rid many countries of the curse of revolution and protected them
from European domination. On the other hand, some American capitalists
selfishly exploited the southern republics, which view these profiteers as
representing the United States. To prove that “man can surpass
misunderstanding,” he called on Latin Americans to accept America’s help in
making themselves fit for self-government and on American capitalists to
“cleanse our hands of gold-dust.”
Young Cage’s speech won the oratorical contest, and he graduated Los
Angeles High as class valedictorian. The school yearbook characterized seniors
by letters of the acrostic ROMAN. For his R(ecreation) he received “orating”;
for A(spiration) he got “to earn a D.D. and Ph.D.”; and for N(oted for) he
received a quite John Cage, Sr.—like “being radical.” Despite thoughts of
becoming a Methodist minister, he grew attracted at this time to the Liberal