It seems inevitable that whenever people discover or determine or divine or decide that I am a composer, they are compelled to ask, "What do you do with your music?"¹ Recently, someone asked me that question. Recently, I have been reading and re-reading a lot of books. Recently, I read a book of essays about John Cage and his music;² in fact, I was not finished reading that book when the question was asked recently. Reading these essays prompted me to re-read some parts of Silence³ recently. One of the parts I re-read was Composition As Process. Recently, I also re-read a lot of Richard Brautigan poems and novels. In the process of acquiring new copies of his work,⁴ I acquired a volume that included Revenge of the Lawn and So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away, neither of which I had read previously. Before reading a lot of Brautigan^*, I read some books by Tom Robbins,⁵ and some by Kurt Vonnegut,⁶ and several by other writers⁷ whose names I do not recall right now. And (recently) I have re-read some random portions of Finnegan's Wake.⁸ I have been reading a lot^**, but I have also been composing⁹ -- 'writing music' some might say¹⁰ -- lately. Lately, I have been doing a lot of thinking. John Cage said that we should "Let go of each thought as though it were rotten wood. Let go of each thought as though it were a piece of stone," and so on. John Cage also asked a lot of questions. This leads me to believe that John Cage thought a lot. It seems to me that he would have had to think a lot to come up with so many interesting questions. One of the questions posed by John Cage is: "Is it true there are no questions that are really important?" Recently, I have thought this about that: That might be a really important question.¹¹ Lately, I have thought that maybe that question is more important than "what do you do with your music." If I cook something (a cheesecake, for instance), there is no question of what to do with that cheesecake. It is a much simpler proposition to determine what to do with a cheesecake than what to do with music. But maybe that is not really the question people are really asking. Maybe they are asking something entirely different. Maybe I missed an important question. Maybe the real question people are really asking is: What do you do with your music? That is an easier question to approach. The answer is easier to formulate. The answer is easier to state. The answer is easier to promulgate. The answer is easier to disseminate. The answer is: I cannot answer that question. I cannot answer that question. I cannot answer that question. I cannot answer that question. I cannot answer that question. It seems a good question, but I cannot answer that question because I am not someone else. I cannot experience hearing my music as someone else. I think I can
only experience the music^*** from my
viewpoint,
from my perspective.
(Also, I have been told that I think too much.¹²)
But,
what about the music?


That seems a good question.

 ¹ It seems that they also invariably ask "What kind of music do you write," but that is another question.

 ² The book is John Cage: Composed In America, edited by Marjorie Perloff and Charles Junkerman, and published by The University of Chicago Press in 1994. I found several of the essays to be quite interesting.

 ³ The contents of Silence were written by John Cage over several years, and assembled, and originally published in 1961 by Wesleyan University Press.

 ⁴ When I originally read his work, most of the books belonged to someone else. Now, they have been republished in volumes containing what was originally three books. The writing is still just as appealing, but somehow it doesn't feel quite right being so heavy.

 ⁵ Most of these I had read before a long time ago, but one of them was new.

 ⁶ This was definitely all re-reading, and some of it was re-re-re-...reading. Maybe it's because we, Kurt & I, spent so much time living in Indiana -- only a few miles, but several years apart --, but mostly I think it is because he's a pretty damned good writer.

 ⁷ I would apologize, but considering I can't recall the names of the writers and won't mention the names of the books, it really doesn't seem necessary. Some of the books were, however, interesting to me at the time, though. They were nice; I liked them.

 ⁸ This was written by James Joyce. There is somumdumthing intriguing and pleasing aboudit, but I'm still knot sure whether (weather?) I getteturnot.

 ⁹ What kind of music have I been composing, you might ask. Do you really want to know? Does it make a difference?

 ¹⁰ That pretty much covers reading and writing, but what of arithmetic?

 ¹¹ Tom Robbins had this to say:
     "Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
     Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
     Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
     There is only one serious question. And that is:
     Who knows how to make love stay?
     Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.
     Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and the end of time.
     Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon."
What do you think about that?

 ¹² This may be true; sometimes, in fact, it is true. At least, I think it is true.