Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 12:17:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: Cage and Nietzsche: Cage 2


This is from _Lecture on Nothing_.  I will butcher it by destroying the
typographic layout and therefore the silence which interpenetrates it.
It seems to me to have some deep connection to the discussion of the ER 
between Bernard and LC.

"This is a composed talk, for I am making it just as I make a piece of music.
It is like a glass of milk.  We need the glass and we need the milk.  
Or again it is like an empty glass into which at any moment anything may
be poured.  As we go along (who knows?) an idea may occur in this talk.
I have no idea whether one will or not.  If one does, let it.  Regard it
as something seen momentarily, as though from a window while traveling.
If across Kansas, then, of course, Kansas.  Arizona is more interesting,
almost too interesting, especially for a New Yorker who is being interested
in spite of himself in everything.  Now he knows he needs the Kansas in him.
Kansas is like nothing on earth, and for New Yorker very refreshing.
It is like an empty glass, nothing but wheat, or is it corn?  Does it matter
which?  Kansas has this about it: at any instant, one may leave it, and 
whenever one wishes one may return to it.  Or you may leave it forever
and never return to it, for we possess nothing.  Our poetry now is the 
realization that we possess nothing.  Anything therefore is a delight
(since we do not possess it) and thus need not fear its loss.  We need not
destroy the past: it is gone; at any moment, it may reappear and seem
to be and be the present.  Would it be a repetition?  Only if we thought
we owned it, but since we don't, it is free and so are we.  Most anybody
knows about the future and how uncertain it is.  What I am calling poetry
is often called content.  I myself have called it form.  It is the
continuity of a piece of music.  Continuity today, when it is necessary,
is a demonstration of disinterestedness.  That is, it is a proof that
our delight lies not in possessing anything.  Each moment presents what
happens.  How different this form sense is from that which is bound up
with memory: themes and secondary themes; their struggle; their
development; the climax; the recapitulation (which is the belief that one
may own one's home).  But actually, unlike the snail, we carry our homes
within us, which enables us to fly or to stay, -- to enjoy each.
But beware of that which is breathtakingly beautiful, for at any moment
the telephone may ring or the airplane come down in a vacant lot.
A piece of string or a sunset, possessing neither, each acts and the
continuity happens.  Nothing more than nothing can be said."


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