I have nothing to say

Hello. I have nothing to say.

The inspiration for my first blog post comes from composer John Cage, who in his Lecture on Nothing (1949 or 1950) says, “I have nothing to say … and I am saying it … and that is poetry ….”

For a long time that was how I remembered this bit of the lecture – the bit that stuck in my mind. Cage’s Lecture on Nothing is a piece of work that I love so much, with all its long pauses, silences, plays at emptiness, the feeling of drifting, its dryness, its boringness. But perhaps most especially I like the way it reflects back on itself: “we are just passing the halfway point … in the second … large part. … The first part … was a rather rambling … discussion of nothing ….” My own work often aims for this self-reflexive quality, most notably in the Start Here series of cassette tapes, which take the cassette tape itself as their central point of reference. And my new film – This Sea Film – riffs on editing and the film’s own structure. My fantasy has been to create a work so self-reflexive that it would function as a kind of black hole, dragging everything into it until the universe itself collapses. It would mean the end of everything.

Anyway, “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry”. That’s how I remembered what Cage said, and I would quote this whenever the situation allowed – a typical scenario being in response to somebody asking me something, when I had nothing to say. After delivering my line I would credit the quote to Cage, showing off my erudition and my deep commitment to unpopular culture, and no doubt making people warm to me even more.

But sadly, on rereading the Cage’s text, I discovered that I had misremembered it. In fact it goes, “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry … AS I NEED IT.” With just four words he’d ruined one of my favourite quotes. Read it in the voice of Oliver Hardy reprimanding Stan Laurel: “As I need it”.

By skipping over the “as I need it” bit I had transformed Cage’s statement into a monumental truth about art: not having anything to say can be art. I liked this, I suppose, because I don’t really like art that is about something – or more accurately because it is about something. In this respect I’m a snobby old modernist of the Frankfurt School persuasion, who only likes forms and styles, and colours, and sounds, and volumes, and shapes. I also like scale, by the way. But I don’t really like stories, for example – I’m not that bothered about narrative cinema, most of which I find to be the wrong kind of boring.

I felt that Cage had spoiled his own quote by reducing it from a great truth about art, and an instruction of how to create great art, to just a statement of personal preference – much as I have been doing above. Obviously Cage had more going for him than just the Lecture on Nothing. I taught bits of Cage for many years on my undergraduate Sound Studies course, including 4’33”, of course. And like many researchers working in sound, I have quoted from his manifesto The Future of Music: Credo numerous times – most recently in the Introduction to my new book Film Sound Modernism (you can read the actual introduction here if you don’t believe me). I also enjoyed researching and listening to his radio ‘play’ The City Wears a Slouch Hat (1942), as well as his early experiments in tape-based musique concrete (e.g. Williams Mix). Anyway, as Trump might say … big fan.

But I suppose what I liked most about Cage was that early in his career he always wore a tie. Always nicely turned out – like somebody going to work rather than just swanning around, like a swan. But sartorially, I think he let himself down a bit later in his career, dropping the suit-and-tie combo in favour of a slightly more relaxed look – much as I have done, following my retirement, sporting a blue Rohan fleece and rodeo clown’s trousers, dressed as an old fat tramp.

Anyway, all this is simply to let you know that I have nothing to say. But I am saying it, and this is poetry.

As I need it.