I am someone who on a good day would like to call himself an intellectual. Things in my world are either already rational or are on their way to becoming so, the ultimate objective is some sort of understanding of everything. So when I hear of things just for their own sake, well it strikes me as a closed system.
That is my problem with Cunningham, for example. Motion for its own sake that is not even supported by the music. Halfway into the first Youtube video of the performance I remembered that this is not meant to be analyzed; this is not meant to have some sort of overall meaning. It is just motion. This is my problem with the post-modernist nothingness. The natural question is what then, what does this mean? Maybe they are making a larger point; that our entire existence here is without meaning, that we should just live it out by experiencing things of no particular meaning. But I think there is a larger social issue here. When the entire civilization has no meaning outside of its existence, when it is not working to create something or to improve upon something, has it not lost its way? Has it not lost that which allowed it to rise from the dark ages, to question the dogma of the established systems of power and religion? I mean a dedication to meaning, to a search, which may or may not yield results. But when we state that there is nothing to be found we do not go looking.
But back to art, as I can go on about this for a long time. Both Cunningham and Cage make interesting points. Both are unusual. Typically I think of music as creating the setup for dance. Cunningham wants it to be completely unrelated, even not involved at all, while Cage wants, to quote “music…cooperative with dance.” The only potential use that I see myself having for the work of the first is to rest my brain from it’s sometimes tiring efforts to assimilate large amounts of information. Cage, however, could be more interesting, as he is trying to accomplish some sort of relationship between music and dance, which should then be analyzable.
In a supreme bit of irony this has, however, already generated thinking within me, as can be seen by the many words above. I am intrigued by their work even though I do not see a point, an objective, maybe precisely because I do not see a point. Cunningham, as he stated in his interview, “want(s) it to be just sound.” His 4’33’’ performance was just that. It had no meaning. I am sorry if my personal problem with that may be overbearing and borderline if not fully dogmatic.