John Cage's book, A Year from Monday, is featured on page nine of the WEC. The large block from the book presented is Cage speaking on the own ebb and flow of his thought process. One particular bit, about Marshall McLuhan: "I then explained that I believe - and am acting upon - Marshall McLuhan's statement that we have through electronic technology produced an extension of our brains to the world formerly outside of us. To me this means that the disciplines, gradual and sudden (principally Oriental), formerly practiced by individuals to pacify their minds, bringing them into accord with ultimate reality, must now be practiced socially - this is not just inside our heads, but outside of them, in the world, where our central nervous now is."
For me, it's difficult to approach McLuhan non-cynically - given that techno-human extension optimism became an iphone, the "global village" a surveillance system. What can we do with McLuhan (or for that matter, Cage) today? Can a utopia (the social as non-mandated individualized mind pacifying) exist in "ultimate reality" (alongside virtual reality)?
A Year from Monday is a really great book. Interest: PDF: http://monoskop.org/images/a/a3/Cage_John_A_Year_from_Monday_New_Lectures_and_Writings.pdf
on the other hand, the potentials of TV through one of my favorite bands:
In the mid 1960s, the militia driven government of Brazil clamped down on free speech (or creative expression of any kind, really). Musical performers involved in the Tropicalia movement (really psychedelic everything but the kitchen-sink music) such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were exiled. Os Mutantes (a personal favorite) used television as a forum to not only get to play their music, but to present their explicitly critical of the Brazilian government songs to a wide audience. Perhaps with less stakes, but this can exemplify how social electronic forums - social networks and camera phones being the dominant form today, but also TV - can be a valid forum for expressing a want for reform, despite the trappings. Here they are performing in France in 1969:
Great post and totally agree on "it's difficult to approach McLuhan [or Cage] non-cynically." However, I am thinking, in light of Adorno, about protest music and commitment vs autonomy. For Adorno, popular music was doomed from the start because, as entertainment, is inseparable from consumption and superficial amusement. In fact, the protest song of the 1960s was rapidly absorbed by the entertainment industry, and therefore lost its power for political engagement. I love listening to the 60s, and I prefer Gilberto Gil than getting bored with John Cage -- but I am a consumer of culture. Thinking too of Cage vs La Monte Young, and how the sounds of the latter were rapidly incorporated into psychedelic music and then into entertainment -- while Cage remained of interest for visual artists, philosophers, art historians and such type of nerds.
ReplyDeleteHere is that interesting video of Adorno on music and protest song --for those not in Adorno's seminar last semester:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbytz1_adorno-music-and-protest_creation