What artists really do
John Cage on the whole job, in a nutshell
What do artists actually do all day? The answer is as various as the artists themselves—but in a 1958 lecture, the composer John Cage told a story that pretty much sums up the entire job, or at least how I’ve come to think of it.
(By artists, I mean anyone making art in whatever discipline—writing, painting, music, you name it.)
Cage was talking about his youthful apprenticeship with the legendary Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, who in the 1930s fled Nazi Germany for Los Angeles, where Cage sought him out for music lessons. (Cage was then in his twenties, Schoenberg around sixty.) In his lecture, Cage said:
After I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, “In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony.” I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, “In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.”
Isn’t that great? And isn’t that pretty much what it means to be an artist? That you must find an area at the very limit of your abilities—an area that you find deeply engaging and that you can also never quite master, and maybe not even really define—and then just … keep plugging away at it, sometimes in utter frustration and other times in a spirit of joyful gratitude (depending on your temperament, the state of your bank account, how much sleep you got the night before, and other constantly shifting variables).
Cage usually defaulted to joyful gratitude, or at least genial acceptance. “Do you think everything works out for the best?” an interviewer once asked him. “Maybe not the best,” Cage replied, “but everything works out to something.”
FIVE YEARS OF SUBTLE MANEUVERS
Today marks this newsletter’s five-year anniversary! I sent out the first issue on February 24, 2020, to seventy-four recipients—and now the list has grown to more than thirty-five thousand. What a delight! I feel so privileged to have this community of readers and fellow creative head-beaters. Sincerely, thank you all for following along over these last sixty months and one hundred and fifty-eight issues. As Jerry Saltz says, “I can’t write if writing is without you.”
I also owe you all a brief apology: Last month, I got so engrossed in trying to meet the latest (and final?) of my book deadlines that I failed to keep up my usual every-other-Monday schedule. I’ll try to get back on track in March—but I also trust that you will forgive the interruption while I finally, finally put this book to bed. 🙏😴
SONIA’S POEM OF THE WEEK
While I have your attention, I also wanted to quickly plug the only newsletter that I open every single week: Sonia’s Poem of the Week, which is exactly what it sounds like—one good poem delivered to your inbox every Friday, selected by the writer Sonia Feldman. I’ve discovered so many great poems and poets thanks to her sensitive curation. Definitely subscribe if you’re not already on the list.
WORM ZOOM
Though the newsletter schedule has been inconsistent lately, the weekday Worm Zoom has been wriggling along as usual. We meet for two hours every weekday morning from 6–8am Pacific / 9–11am Eastern time. It’s a great way to inject some virtual accountability and camaraderie into your creative practice. Join us anytime.
RELATED ISSUES
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Cage’s beating his head against the wall reminds me of Patrick Modiano’s Nobel-Prize acceptance speech, which I think about any day I’m having a tough day writing:
“Writing is a strange and solitary activity. There are dispiriting times when you start working on the first few pages of a novel. Every day, you have the feeling you are on the wrong track. This creates a strong urge to go back and follow a different path. It is important not to give in to this urge, but to keep going. It is a little like driving a car at night, in winter, on ice, with zero visibility. You have no choice, you cannot go into reverse, you must keep going forward while telling yourself that all will be well when the road becomes more stable and the fog lifts.”
It is the same with spiritual awakening. You spend your life beating your head against this separation wall between you and the Divine. The difference is that, in the end, you discover the wall was illusory; you and God are one, and you could have seen this if you'd only stopped beating your head against the wall and noticed the wall was in your head.