This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

"If I had to Live my Life Over Again, I would Be a Botanist": John Cage’s Mycology Collection

IGE Note 1

Shultis, “A Living Oxymoron: Norman O. Brown's Criticism of John Cage,” in Perspectives of New Music 44, No. 2 (Summer, 2006): 66–87.

Brown cited Cage’s famous book Silence (1961) in his influential publication Loves Body (1966). Brown liked Cage but he criticized his work during Cage’s 75th birthday celebration at Wesleyan University (1988) and another event at Stanford before the composer’s death. Although they had a contentious relationship, Brown is unsurpassed as an exegete of Cage’s work.

A flyer from Cage's 75th birthday celebration at Wesleyan. Bottoms gave a talk on the Santa Cruz mycology collection durning this event. I would like to thank Rita Bottoms for providing this image from her private collection.

Bottoms's took extensive notes at this conference so she could get to know the many people actively involved in the experimental arts community during the late 1980s. I would like to thank Rita Bottoms for providing this image from her private collection.

This page is referenced by:

In The Garden of Eden: John Cage, Norman O. Brown, and Alan Chadwick During Cage’s downtime from scheduled events during his 1968 visit to UC Santa Cruz, he reconnected with his longtime friend and influential scholar, writer, and social philosopher, Norman O. Brown or “Nobby” as his friends called him. He served as a humanities professor in the History of Consciousness department, a program "that operates at the intersection of established and emergent disciplines and fields, acquainting students with leading intellectual trends in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences." Cage and Brown developed a friendship around 1960 when Cage was in residency at Wesleyan University and where Brown was a member of their faculty. Although Brown was critical of Cage’s work, they found communion in mushrooming. [1] Further, in a letter to Brown dated December 1966, Cage admitted, “God knows why, but we need one another’s words.” [2]

Alan Chadwick, a pioneering horticulturalist and Rudolph Steiner devotee, was brought on at the request of the philosophy professor Paul Lee. Lee was the individual who came up with an idea to have a garden that would stimulate students’ minds, and it was Chadwick who brought the vision of understanding organic and biodynamic farming to life. [3] The garden was a part of the various agrarian movements of the mid-1960s–1970s in particular the larger back to the land movement. In fact, his garden project became so famous that in it was featured in the popular LIFE Magazine in 1970.

Alan Chadwick Gardens at UC Santa Cruz ca. 1968. Photo Courtesy of UCSC Campus History Collection Digital Collections. University Library, University of California Santa Cruz.

Lee had taken Brown, Cage, the poet and mycologist Robert Duncan, and the painter Morris Graves, to meet Alan Chadwick and forage on the Santa Cruz campus, which is known for its diversity of unique wild mushrooms. In fact, Cage had collected specimens of mushroom he had never tasted before [4].

Painting to John Cage from Morris Graves. Letter to John Cage, Oct. 19 [1956] ", text reads "Oct. 19, Dear John, Yum, Yum! Morris [Graves] - Tempera painting on paper, 36" x 20.5" in original frame Oct. 19, [1956]. John Cage Mycology Collection. Special Collections Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Correspondence /drawing by Morris Graves to Cage ["Cantharellus Aurantiacus" at the "Lake' Eureka] November 20, 1965. The John Cage Mycology Collection. Special Collections Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz. Box-folder 1:5 Correspondence n.d. 1956–1992.

Cage was overwhelmed by this experience with Chadwick. In his “Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1969,” a collage-like journal of observations and anecdotes constructed through chance operations and experimentation with different typefaces, he wrote: [5]
CXXXIV. Chadwick, gardener at Santa Cruz. "You must meet our wizard." (Chadwick's back, Nobby told me, had been injured in war, but when we went mushrooming with his student-helpers, Chadwick, half-naked, leapt and ran like a pony. Catching up with him, it was joy and poetry I heard him speak. But while I listened he noticed some distant goal across and down the fields and, shouting something I couldn't understand because he'd already turned away, he was gone.) Students had defected from the university or had come especially from afar to work with him like slaves. They slept unsheltered in the woods. After the morning’s hunt with him and them, I thought: These people live; others haven't even been born. [6]
Cage declared that his experience on the UC Santa Cruz campus was one of the most wonderful days of his life. [7] Further, Cage was so overwhelmed by this land experiment and the campus that he vowed to donate his mushroom materials to the campus and in particular to Chadwick and his garden chalet that was in the process of being built. [8]

Norman O. Brown talking with UC Santa Cruz students at the Alan Chadwick Garden chalet featured in LIFE Magazine 1970. The Alan Chadwick Archive.

Although Watts and Brown were an important impetus for Cage’s and Cunningham’s visit to UC Santa Cruz in 1968, it was the innovation of Chadwick and his students who inspired Cage to donate his mushroom collection to the university.

References:

Bottoms, Rita. Riffs and Ecstasies: True Stories. Venice, Italy: Damocle Edizioni.

Bottoms, Rita, and Irene Reti. “Rita Bottoms: John Cage.” In Rita Bottoms: Polyartist Librarian, 64–172. Santa Cruz, CA: The University of California, 2005.

Cage, John. “Diary, How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1969 (Part V).” In M: Writings ‘62––’72, 57–85. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1974.

Lee, Paul. There Is a Garden in the Mind: A Memoir of Alan Chadwick and the Organic Movement in California. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2013.

Patterson, David W. “Words and Writings.” In The Cambridge Companion to John Cage. David Nicholls ed., 85–99. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Shultis, Christopher. “A Living Oxymoron: Norman O. Brown's Criticism of John Cage.” In Perspectives of New Music 44, No. 2 (Summer, 2006): 66–87.

Silverman, Kenneth. Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage. New York: Knopf, 2010.

This page is referenced by:

This page references: