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

Chadwick Gardens UCSC 1970 LIFE

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The Whole Collection and the Whole Earth By the late 1960s Cage amassed a ton of realia. [1] He needed to simplify his living space and decided to donate a lot of his materials to universities. Afterall, Cage taught and performed in these establishments. He wrote, "without the universities I think my music would be very little known and I'm sure that's true too of Merce Cunningham's dancing.” [2] In 1971, Cage decided that his mycological collection would go to UC Santa Cruz and informed Norman O. Brown that he would personally bring the first shipment of his collection. This made Brown nervous. “Nobby” called Bottoms, “a million times” at home and at her work to make sure she was ready for this donation. [3] Cage visited the Santa Cruz campus that same year and had lunch with Brown, Bottoms, and Lee at the Whole Earth Restaurant to discuss details about his donation. [4]

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

Cage set fairly unconventional guidelines as to how the collection would be stored and managed. He requested the archive be kept in Alan Chadwick’s proposed chalet so the students could check out the books on a good faith principle and study the materials in the open air of one of the best mycological communities in the world. Dumbfounded by Cage’s decision, Brown asked Cage if he would go as far as to include his copy of the exceptionally rare Valentina and Gordon Wasson book, Mushrooms, Russia, and History (1957) that his friends including Brown and his wife, got him and signed for his fiftieth birthday. [5] Cage confidently replied, “Yes Nobby, even the Wasson. The revolution has to start somewhere. Let it begin with me!!!”

The UC Santa Cruz Alan Chadwick Garden Chalet that sits at the west entrance of the Gardens.

An important letter between Rita Bottoms and Cage details the significant impression Chadwick had on Cage and his decision to donate the archive to UC Santa Cruz and reinforces the fact that he wanted the students to use the archive in a non-traditional environment so they could study where they worked–in nature:
As I told you, my decision to give the collection to the University of California at Santa Cruz was made because of my enthusiasm for the work of Mr. Alan Chadwick... I would like the books, as he would, to be in the chalet in the garden or in another chalet which he plans to make, which would take the form of a “quiet house” and which would include a collection of the writings of Rudolf Steiner and my mushroom books.
I am particularly happy about the combination of my collection with the Steiner collection because I did much of my purchasing of the books and Association with David Tudor who is himself devoted to the work of Steiner.
I wish to emphasize my desire that the books be placed in a botanical situation rather than a conventional library situation. I am delighted by the prospect of there being used by people working in the earth and a situation adjacent to their work period I do not want to have them obliged to stop work and go to another location in order to consult books.
I realize that this request is unconventional from an academic point of view but I trust that it will be followed. On the other hand, I think the material should be cataloged in a conventional manner and the cards associated with the collection should be included and the University catalog. [6]
Bottoms mentioned in my interview with her, the notion of keeping this important collection outside "in the dirt" and accessible to anyone at anytime was, “totally revolutionary.” This was indeed a unique concept as Special Collections departments are repositories that house rare books and documents that are irreplaceable.

Rita Bottoms discusses the John Cage Mycology Collection and where Cage wanted his materials stored. Interview with Rita Bottoms October 11, 2020.

After the meeting at the Whole Earth Cafe, Cage wrote a letter to Bottoms expressing his happiness with the donation of "mushroom books and mushroomiana" while disagreeing with the appraisal of the collection (refer to note 4) and items that were not evaluated such as the Morris Graves painting. As mentioned before, he reinforced his desire to have the collection stored in the Chadwick chalet and wanted the "disposition of books made by him."

Chadwick was fired from UC Santa Cruz in early 1972 which seems politically motivated and remains a sore topic at the university. [] Bottoms had custodial rights of the collection and in the amidst the confusion, Cage's collection was stored in the library. This is exactly where Cage did not want his materials placed. In fact he wrote a letter to Bottom's and to the Chancellor of University on December 26, 1972 mentioning that he was in contact with Chadwick and suggested that the books from his collection should be with Chadwick if the university was willing to allow this.

Cage was upset that his wishes were not realized and that the materials he donated were only available, "six hours a day five days a week." The Special Collections department improved access to Cage's collection and his books are easily accessible. In a personal letter to Bottoms Cage apologized for his previous communication:
I wanted you to know that I love you all and didn't want to make you miserable with my last letter. But yesterday a good letter from David Arora about the changes in the availability of the books made me happy. Will Shorty send you a box of materials and also the recently finished portfolio of lithographs.

Cordially,

John Cage

The mycologist David Arora was a student at UC Santa Cruz and is one of the leading mycologists in the United States. He remembers the influence of the collection on his early career:

The study and practice of mycology was central to Cage's artistic output and creative endeavors– a topic that joins his interest in Norman O. Brown, Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan, D.T. Suzuki, Henry David Thoreau, and Zen Buddhism. But it was nature and these terrestrial specimens that regularly occupied the composer’s thoughts.
Cage sought refuge and found inspiration in nature and in mushrooms. This is an important motivation as to why he donated his mycology collection to UC, Santa Cruz. In the 1960s, Santa Cruz represented a place of transformation and renewal. It was a new university full of novel ideas whether it be in education, organic farming or foraging. Cage's engagement with mycology is a topic that, until recently, has not received much scholarly attention.

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.

Sharon Cadwallader, Judi Ohr, Paul Lee, and Anita Walker, Whole Earth Cookbook: Access to Natural Cooking (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.

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