How to Improve the World

“When information rubs against information”

the results are startling and effective.
The perrenial quest for involvement,
fill-in, takes many forms.”

The Medium Is the Massage

From The Aspen International Design Conference 1966 John Cage Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse)

I.
Continue; I'll discover where you

sweat (Kierkegaard). We are getting

rid of ownership, substituting use.

Beginning with ideas. Which ones can we

take? Which ones can we give?

Disappearance of power politics. Non-

measurement. Japanese, he said: We

also hear with our feet I'd quoted

Busoni: Standing between musician and

music is notation. Before I'd given the

history: chance operations, indeterminacy.

I'd cited the musics of India: notation

of them's after the fact. I'd spoken of

direct musical action (since it's

ears, not interposing eyes). 2:00
A.M.,

Jensen said, "Even if you didn't like

the results (Lindsay, etc.), we hope

you liked the telling of it." Telling

(?) of it! We were there while it was

happening! II. Minimum ethic: Do
what 

you said you'd do. Impossible? 

Telephone. No answer? My idea was

that if they wanted to fight (human 

nature and all that), they should 

do it in the Antarctic, rest of us 

gambling on daily outcome: proceeds for 

world welfare. Instead they're 

cooperative down there, exchanging 

data, being friendly. April '64: U.S. 

State Department man gave Honolulu 

talk -- "global village whether we 

like it or not" --, cited fifty-five 

services which are global in extent. 

Mountain range dividing Oahu,
formerly

crenelated (crenelations for self-

protection while shooting arrows), 

is now tunneled, permitting population

circulation. Wars etc. part of dying

political-economic structures. Social

work equals increasing number of

global services. III. AS MCLUHAN
SAYS,

EVERYTHING HAPPENS AT ONCE. IMAGE IS

NO LONGER STREAM FALLING OVER ROCKS,

GETTING FROM ORIGINAL TO FINAL PLACE;

IT'S AS TENNEY EXPLAINED: A VIBRATING

COMPLEX, ANY ADDITION OR SUBTRACTION

OF COMPONENT(S), REGARDLESS OF APPARENT

POSITION(S) IN THE TOTAL SYSTEM,

PRODUCING ALTERATION, A DIFFERENT MUSIC.

FULLER: AS LONG AS ONE HUMAN BEING IS

HUNGRY, THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE IS

HUNGRY. City planning's obsolete.
What's

needed is global planning so Earth 

may stop stepping like octopus on its 

own feet. Buckminster Fuller uses his 

head: comprehensive design science; 

inventory of world resources. Conversion:

the mind turns around, no longer 

facing in its direction. Utopia? 

Self-knowledge. Some will make it, 

with or without LSD. The others? Pray 

for acts of God, crises, power 

failures, no water to drink. IV. We

see symetrically; canoe on the northern

Canadian lake; stars in the midnight sky

repeated in water; forested shores

precisely mirrored. Our hearing's

assymetrical: noticed sounds surprise us;

echoes of shouts we make transform our

voices; straight line of sound from us to

shore's followed by echo's slithering

around the lake's perimeter. When I

said "Fifty-five global services,"

California Bell Telephone man replied

(September '65), "It's now sixty-one."

The seasons (creation, preservation,

destruction, quiescence): this was

experience and resultant idea (no 

longer is: he flies to Rio).
What shall 

we wear as we travel about? A summer suit 

with or without long underwear? What 

about Stein's idea: People are the way 

their land and air is? V. When I
said

that culture was changing from

Renaissance to what it is now (McLuhan),

Johns objected to what he said was

an oversimplification. But Johns was

speaking according to our non-

Renaissance experience: total field, non-

focused multiplicity. We are, are we not, 

socially speaking, in a situation of

the old dying and the new coming into

being? For the old -- paying bills,

seeking for power -- take the attitude

of play: games. For the new -- doing what

isn't necessary, moving sand from one

part of the beach to another"

(Buckminster Fuller) -- take the

religious attitude: celebration. (It

celebrates.) The people have left.

The cat and kittens were taken to the

SPCA. The house is full of fleas. VI. 

They say totally determined music and

indeterminate music sound the same. I

visited Hamada. Getting up from

the wheel, he said, "I'm not interested

in results; just going on. Art's in

process of coming into its own: life.

The lake is undefined. The land around

rests upon it, obscuring tis shape, shape

that needs to remain unrevealed. Sung.

"Floating World." Rain, curtain of wind-

swept lake's surface beyond: second view

(there are others, he tells me, one with

mists rising). Yesterday it was stillness

and reflections, groups of bubbles. An

American garden: water, not sand;

vegetation, not stones. Thunder.

Without intending to, I'm going from lake

to lake. Saltair. Salt
Lake. VII.

Hugh Nibley. I hadn't seen him since 

high school days. I asked him what 

he thought about other planets and

sentient populations. Yes, he said,

throughout the universe: it's Mormon

doctrine. We'd said good-bye. I opened

the door of the car, picked up my 

attache case and everything in it fell

out on the grass and the gutter. His

comment: Something memorable always

happens. Things we were going to do
are

now being done by others. They were, it

seems, not in our minds to do (were we

or they out of our minds?) but simply 

ready to enter any open mind, any mind

disturbed enough not to have an idea in

it. VIII. The daily warmth we

experience, my father said, is not

transmitted by Sun to Earth but is what 

Earth does in response to Sun. 

Measurements, he said, measure 

measuring means. Basho: Matsutake ya


shirano ko no ha no hebaritsuku.

The leaf of some unknown tree sticking

on the mushroom (Blythe). Mushroom does

not know that leaf is sticking on it

(Takemitsu). Project: Discover way to

translate Far Eastern texts so Western men

can read orientally.

Communication? Bakarashi! Words

without syntax, each word

polymorphic. He wanted me to agree
that

the piano tuner and the piano maker have

nothing to do with it (the composition),

The younger ones had said: Whoever makes

the stretcher isn't separate from the

painting. (It doesn't stop there

either.) IX. LOOKING IN ALL
DIRECTIONS 

NOT JUST ONE DIRECTION. Housing 

(Fuller) will be, like telephoning, a 

service. Only circumstance to stop your 

living there: someone's there already

(it's busy). Thus we'll learn to

desire emptiness. Not being able to say,

"This is mine," we'll want when we

inquire to get no response at all. 4:00

P.M. throughout the world. Whether

we like it or not (is what he said) 

it's happening to us. Advertisements are 

all good; the news is all bad (McLuhan). 

But how we receive bad news can change: 

we're glad to hear unemployment's 

increasing. Soon, all that will be 

required of us will be one hour's 

work per year (Fuller). X. They ask
what

the purpose of art is. Is that how

things are? Say there were a thousand

artists and one purpose, would one

artist be having it and all the nine- 

hundred and ninety-nine others be

missing the point? Arcata Bottom
sign

said: Experiment endlessly and keep

humble. "Write to Center for the Study

of Democratic Institutions; they'll

know about the global services." I 

did. They answered they knew nothing,

suggested writing to State Department.

Books one formerly needed were hard to

locate. Now they're all out in 

paperback. Society's changing.

Relevant information's hard to come 

by. Soon it'll be everywhere, unnoticed.

XI. ELECTRONICS. Day comes, the day
we

die. There's less and less to do:

circumstances do it for us. Earth.

Old reasons for doing things no

longer exist. (Sleep whenever. Your

work goes on being done. You and it no

longer have a means of separation.)

We had the chance to do it

individually. Now we must do it

together: globally. War will not be

group conflict: it'll be murder, pure 

and simple, individually conceived.

Curiosity, awareness. They returned to 

the fact we all need to eat to explain

their devotion to money rather than music.

When I spoke of the equation, work

equals money equals virtue, they

interrupted me (they didn't let me say

that nowadays there's no equation),

saying, "How can you speak of money and

virtue in the same breath?" XII.
WHERE

THERE DOESN'T SEEM TO BE ANY SPACE,

KNOW WE NO LONGER KNOW WHAT SPACE IS.

HAVE FAITH SPACE IS THERE, GIVING ONE

THE CHANCE TO RENOVATE HIS WAY OF

RECOGNIZING IT, NO MATTER THE MEANS,

PSYCHIC, SOMATIC, OR MEANS

INVOLVING EXTENSIONS OF EITHER.

People still ask for definitions, but 

it's quite clear now that nothing 

can be defined. Let alone art, its 

purpose etc. We're not even sure of 

carrots (whether they're what we think

they are, how poisonous they are, who

grew them and under what circumstances).

SHE WAS INDIGNANT WHEN I SUGGESTED

THE USE OF AN APHRODISIAC. WHY?

NATURALLY SHE CONSIDERS TV A WASTE OF

TIME. XIII. The purpose of one 

activity is no longer separate from the

purpose of any other activity. All

activities fuse in one purpose which

is (cf. Huang-Po Doctrine of Universal

Mind) no purpose. Imitate the

Ganges' sands, becoming indifferent to

perfume, indifferent to filth.

Influence. Where does it come from?

Responsibility? Sick ones now are

heartsick. Narcissi, they became

entranced with emotions purposes,

mystified by living in the twentieth 

century. We've invented something else, 

not the wheel. We extended nervous

systems. McLuhan: Agentbite of Outwit

(Location, Spring '63). (The inability of

people to be inactive. As Satie said:

If I don't smoke, someone else will in 

my place. Audience participation, 

active passivity.) XIV. Since the

Spirit's omnipresent, there's a difference

in things but no difference of spirit.

McLuhan was able to say "The medium is

the message" because he started from 

no concern with content. Or choose 

quantity, not quality (we get

quality willy-nilly): i.e. we'd like 

to stay alive, the changes that are 

taking place are so many and so 

interesting. Composition' ll have, he 

said, less and less to do with what

happens. Things happen more

quickly. One of the signs you'll get 

that'll tell you things are going well is that

you and everyone else you know will 

be inhabiting lightweight Dymaxion 

houses, disengaged from ownership and 

from unalterable Earth spot (read

Fuller). XV. Smiling, she said, let 

the old ones walk out: there's not 

much to be done about them in any case. 

Distractions? Interruptions? Welcome 

them. They give you the chance to

know whether you're disciplined. That

way you needn't bother about sitting

cross-legged in the lotus position.

Phonetics. He was a physicist and a

computer-composer in his spare time.

Why was he so stupid? Because he was

of the opinion that the only thing

that will engage the intellect is the

measurement of relations between things?

When told that his mind could change,

his response was, "How? Why?" Conflict

won't be between people and people but

between people and things. In this 

conflict let's try to arrange matters so 

the outcome as in philosophy will 

never be decisive. Treat redwoods, for 

instance, as entities that have at 

least a chance to win. XVI. He

wanders through markets as though 

they were forests and he an exploring 

botanist (throws nothing away). Lake. 

Take what you're working on with
you, if, that is, you have
something to do. Gaps. What a pity
that she should feel obliged to
take matters in her own hands! (There's
practically no kitchen, he says; and
it's already been figured out that
money's being saved.) Mexico.
Europeans are still up against it.
They seem to require a center of
interest. They understand tragedy but
life itself (and any art that's like it)
puzzles them, seems unsatisfactory.
We're starved for entertainment
(thanking the two women). XVII. By
becoming angry I simply altered my
biochemistry, bringing about a two-hour
recovery. Meanwhile circumstances
continued characterized by habit. Going
in different directions we get instead of
separation a sense of space. Music as
discourse (jazz) doesn't work. If
you're going to have a discussion,
have it and use words. (Dialogue is
another matter.) Acts and facts.
Straw that breaks the camel's back:
their saying No (they advertise they'll
say Yes). Principles? Then all's
intolerable. No principles (which
doesn't mean we fail to become
furious). SO? We swim drowning now
and then. I must write and tell him
about beauty, the urgency to avoid
it. XVIII. Hearing of past actions
(politics, economics), people soon
won't be able to imagine how such
things could've happened. Fusing
politics with economics prepared
disappearance of both. Still
invisible. Arriving, realizing we
never departed. He mentioned heads
on the ceiling Seeing them, noticed
him too. Fusion of credit card with
passport. Mens of making one's voice
heard: refusal to honor credit card.
End of the month? That too may be
changed: the measurement of time,
what season it is, whether it's
night or day. In any case, no bills,
just added information. "Take it easy,
but take it." What'll we do? (Before
lunch.) "Wing it." XIX. Wanting list of
current global services, how'll I get
it? Long costly correspondences?
(Pentagon advises telephoning.) I'll
write to the President (of the U.S.), to
the Secretary (of State of the U.S.).
Time passing, I'll ask those I
encounter whether they've any
information. (McLuhan hadn't any.)
I'll write to Fuller. Should have done
that in the first place (Pope Paul,
Lindsay: Take note). Amateur (used to
say, "Don't touch it"') now speaks of
audience participation, feels something,
anything, is needed, would help.
Develop panopticity of mind (Listen). WHAT'LL
HAPPEN WHEN INTELLIGENCE IS RECOGNIZED
AS A GLOBAL RESOURCE (FULLER)?
POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS -- GIVING UP
INVOLVEMENT WITH PLAY (PARTNERS,
OPPONENTS), INVOLVEMENT WITH UNATTAINABLE
GOALS (VICTORIES, TRUTHS,
FREEDOMS) -- WILL SIMPLY FADE OUT OF THE
PICTURE. IMAGE COMING UP IS THAT OF
THE UTILITIES (GAS, ELECTRICITY,
TELEPHONES): UNQUESTIONABLE, EMOTIONALLY
UNAROUSING. XX. What is a drawing?
No one knows any longer. Something
that doesn't require that you wait
while you're making it for it to dry?
Something on paper? Museum director
said (Tobey, Schwitters), "It's a
question of emphasis." Thanksgiving.
Art. Transportation plan (eventually at no
monetary cost, conveyances recognized
for what they are: extensions of each human
being and his luggage): short distances
costly (to taxi for one block is a
luxury), long trips cheap as dirt
(crossing continents, oceans). Effect of
videophone on travel? That we'll
stay home, settling like gods for
impression we'll give of being
everywhere at once? XXI. Everywhere
where economics and ploitics obtain
(everywhere?), policy is dog eat dog.
Take taxi tolls between cities. Those
in one town higher than those in the
other must drive home alone. Relaxation
of rules, ties (Take marriage), is
indicated. Now that we've got the
four-lane roads, we won't have any use for
them. (Good for roller-skating, he said.)
Refuse value judgments. Since
time lags were inordinately long,
change's now welcome. Advertising's
discredited itself. When they
advertise something, we avoid it.
There's nothing we really need to do that
isn't dangerous. Eighth Street
artists knew this years ago: constantly
spoke of risk. But what's meant by risk?
Lose something? Property, life?
Principles?? The way to lose our
principles is to examine them, to give
them an airing. XXII. Heaven's no
longer paved with gold (changes in
church architecture). Heaven's a motel.
She changed part of the loft: wall-to-wall
carpeting, mobile TV. No conflicts.
Twenty-two telephone calls were made
by Betty Zeiger "disrupting efficiency
of federal agencies...dedicated to
pursuit of peace." State Department
said Hawaii speaker was a woman.
Fifty-five (now sixty-one) global services
are in area of humanities "beyond
mere provision of food/shelter." Not
technological services. State Department:
Global village developed from
"Literary Villages" (plan for the
betterment of life in India). "We are
packages of leaking water." "The next
water you drink may be your own."
XXIII. LET'S CALL IT THE
COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS (WE'VE GOT
THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS). THE
QUESTION IS: WHAT ARE THE THINGS
EVERYONE NEEDS REGARDLESS OF LIKES
AND DISLIKES? BEGINNING OF ANSWER:
WATER, FOOD, SHELTER, CLOTHING,
ELECTRICITY, AUDIO-VISUAL
COMMUNICATION, TRANSPORTATION. FORM
OF ANSWER: GLOBAL UTILITIES NETWORK. Do
not fear that as the globe gets utility
organized your daily life will not
remain (or become as the case may be)
disorganized, characterized by chaos,
illuminated anarchically. You'll
have nothing to do; so what will you
do? A lifelong university
(Fuller)? In the lobby after La
Monte Young's music stopped,
Geldzahler said: It's like being in a
womb; now that I'm out, I want to get
back in. I felt differently and so did
Jasper Johns: we were relieved to be
released. XXIV. Knowing-seeing,
conforming with reality. Anscombe's
a feminist, insists on wearing pants.
Obliged to lecture dressed in a
dress, she took one with her,
changed into it, lectured, changed back,
walked home (teaching all the time ) in
pants. As was said, "When will you
undress yourself of your ideas?" No
escape. Billy Klüver said decision
of judge in South America (e.g.) is
taken as precedent by judge in Sweden.
Brown's work (Life Against Death) is
prophetic (also De Kooning's remark: we no
longer have tragedy; the situation an
individual may be in is only pathetic):
society as a mass is what needs
psychoanalysis. (Thus polymorphous
perversity, necessity of Utopia.) Looking
at billions, unlike Nehru, we must
treat them as one person. XXV. SHE
SAYS LIFE IS LIKE A BLANK WALL,
IMPASSIBLE. CORRECT DEDUCTION: SHE IS
IN LOVE. Klüver: ITU lists many
international agreements re Morse code,
telegrams, telephones, radio, television,
emergency signals, meteorological
information, frequencies and powers
of stations, means to prevent
static. "How would it be if these
agreements didn't exist?" (ITU asks.)
"No press-news, no pictures in the
papers, no exchanged radio programs, no
static-free radio reception, no
meteorological prognoses, no storm
warnings, no security at sea, in air."
Klüver reports: ITU (International
Telecommunication Union) was
established in 1865 (nine years
older than UPU -- post -- and seventeen
older than railroad agreements. XXVI.
The truth is that everything causes
everything else. We do not speak therefore
of one thing causing another. There
are no secrets. It's just we thought they
said dead when they said bread. Or
that we weren't tuned in when
transmission took place. Being
told about global services, Barnett
Newman emphasized the importance of
the arts. Society has tape
recorders, radio broadcasts, and also
copyright laws (which it considers
extending). (Gets in its own way.) Get
rid of copyright (this text is
copyright). We're making
nonspecialist interpenetrations.
Automation. Alteration of global
society through electronics so that world
will go round by means of united
intelligence rather than by means of
divisive intelligence (politics,
economics). Say this idea has no basis
in fact but arose through brushing of
misinformation. No sweat. It arose
(the idea exists, is fact). XXVII.
Do not imagine there aren't many things
to do. We need for instance an
utterly wireless technology. Just as
Fuller domes (dome within dome,
translucent, plants between) will give
impression of living in no home at
all (outdoors), so all technology
must move toward way things were
before man began changing them:
identification with nature in her manner
of operation, complete mystery. Fuller
prophecy at end of Tomkins profile
of him editorially (New Yorker)
eliminated. Subject: global
network for electrical power (including
China who'd participate in a spirit
of practicality). Fuller's remarks
considered laughable in view of
November blackout. (We need another
blackout, one that isn't so pleasant,
one that'll suggest using our heads the
way Fuller uses his.) XXVIII. We've
poisoned our food, polluted our air
and water, killed birds and cattle,
eliminated forests, impoverished,
eroded the earth. We're unselfish,
skillful: we include in our acts to
perform -- we've had a rehearsal --
the last one. What would you call it?
Nirvana? "Not only was instant
universal voice communication forecast
by David Sarnoff, but also instant
television, instant newspapers, instant
magazines and instant visual
telephone service...the development of
such global communications system
would link people everywhere...for
reorientation toward a 'one-world
concept of mass communications in an
era marked by the emergence of a
universal language, a universal
culture and a universal common
market.'" XXIX . POPULATION .
Art's obscured the difference between
art and life. Now let life obscure
the difference between life and art.
Fuller's life is art: comprehensive
design science, inventory of world
resources (if enough mined copper
exists, re-use it, don't mine more:
same with ideas). World needs
arranging. It'll be like living a
painting by Johns: Stars and
Stripes 'll be utilities, our daily
lives the brushstrokes. McLuhan: Work's
obsolete. Why? Work's partial
involvement in activity. Activity is
now necessarily total involvement (cf.
work of srtists, work not involved in
profit). Why total involvement?
Electronics. Why everything-at-once?
The way we-things are. Yathabhutam.
Where there's a history of
organization (art), introduce disorder.
Where there's a history of
disorganization (world society),
introduce order. These directives are
no more opposed to one another than
mountain's opposed to spring
weather. "How can you believe this when
you believe that?" How can I not?
Long life.

© John Cage, 1966