Indeterminacy

Vía Pitchfork, reencuentro una magnífica página web dedicada a John Cage: Indeterminacy. La descubrí hace tiempo, me fascinó, y luego la olvidé. Podría haberla guardado en la carpeta de favoritos, pero probablemente su destino hubiera sido el mismo: casi nunca reviso los favoritos; cuando se acumulan demasiados, borro la lista.

Eddie Kohler, responsable de Indeterminacy, explica el contenido de la página:

"John Cage was an American composer, Zen buddhist, and mushroom eater. He was also a writer: this site is about his paragraph-long stories – anecdotes, thoughts, and jokes. As a lecture, or as an accompaniment to a Merce Cunningham dance, he would read them aloud, speaking quickly or slowly as the stories required so that one story was read per minute.

This site archives 190 of those stories. Each story is spaced out, as if it were being read aloud, to fill a fixed area. If you like, you can also read them aloud at a rate of one a minute."


Un ejemplo:

A young man in Japan arranged his circumstances
so that he was able to travel to a distant island
to study Zen with a certain Master for a
three-year period. At the end of the three
years, feeling no sense of accomplishment,
he presented himself to the Master and
announced his departure. The Master said,
“You’ve been here three years. Why don’t
you stay three months more?” The student agreed,
but at the end of the three months he still
felt that he had made no advance. When he
told the Master again that he was leaving,
the Master said, “Look now, you’ve been here
three years and three months. Stay
three weeks longer.” The student did, but
with no success. When he told the Master
that absolutely nothing had happened, the
Master said, “You’ve been here three years,
three months, and three weeks. Stay
three more days, and if, at
the end of that time, you have not
attained enlightenment, commit
suicide.” Towards the end of the
second day, the student was enlightened.

En su conjunto, las historias forman un curioso collage de filosofía zen, teoría musical, micología, anécdotas y recuerdos, todo ello regado con el sentido del humor y la vitalidad desbordante de Cage. Su lectura no sólo nos permite conocer la atractiva personalidad de uno de los compositores más influyentes del siglo XX, también nos ayuda a interpretar y entender su obra musical. La página está diseñada de tal forma que las historias se muestran aleatoriamente (no podía ser de otra forma); pulsar el botón para que aparezca la siguiente historia se puede convertir en una tentación difícilmente evitable, casi una adicción.