not sympathetic to people who consider themselves members of a minority group. And I don’t really support minority groups. I don’t like the notion of the power or the weakness of a group. Hmm? I consider that a form of politics, and I think we’ve passed that.
JR: What would you substitute for the notion of politics?
JC: The uniqueness of the individual.
JR: In—
JC: In every case.
JR: In a free, anarchic society.
JC: Anarchic society.
JR: Wittgenstein, in this book [Culture and Value] which I know you’ve read, since you quote it in your sources [in I-VI]—
JC: Well I haven’t read them all, Joan. I’ve dipped—guided by chance operations.
JR: You don’t have to have read it all for me to ask you this. And, actually, a question I’ll ask later on is about your dipping. You talk very beautifully about “brushing” the source text.
JC: Yes. That term comes from Marshall McLuhan, you know, “brushing information against information.” And that this is our only work now. Do you know that? Yes, work is obsolete. All we do is brush information against information. (laughter)
JR: You may or may not have read this: Wittgenstein writes, “People say again and again that philosophy doesn’t really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. But the people who say this don’t understand why it has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions. As long as there continues to be a verb ‘to be’ that looks as if it functions in the same way as to eat’ and ‘to drink,’ as long as we still have the adjectives ‘identical,’ ‘true,’ ‘false,’ ‘possible,’ as long as we continue to talk of a river of time, of an expanse of space, etc. etc. people will keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems capable of clearing up.”7
JC: Suzuki said something similar.8 He said, after an evening when we were all asking him questions—we were walking on Fifth Avenue—a lady turned to him and said, Dr. Suzuki, we talk to you all evening and we ask you questions and nothing is solved. And he said, that’s why I love philosophy; no one wins, (laughs)
JR: And now this cat [Cage’s cat, Losa] is lying on my next question, (laughter)
JC: He’s very dog-like. He likes to be right in the center. (Losa is resettled to other side of table.)
JR: You talk of artists setting examples. Do artists—in, say, using language in new ways—change the grammar of the way we are together?
JC: Are you asking this in relation to what you just read from Wittgenstein?
JR: Yes.
JC: Yes, isn’t that beautiful, (pause) We don’t know. But we can try.
JR: And the same for developing new intuitions?
JC: You know I have a slight chip on my shoulder about the word “intuition.” I did speak about the uniqueness of each individual and I believe that. And I suppose the intuition of one individual would be quite different from the intuition of another, but it sounds like something very special—intuition, hmm? And I’ve always suspected the word “inspiration” in the same way. If we have to have intuition, or if we have to have inspiration in order to carry on the day, then where are we? Will we have to wait for a long time after getting up? Before we can do anything? What!? (laughter) That’s why I feel a little bit off of those things—because they sound like special circumstances. I would rather be—even if I were at a lower altitude—I would rather be able to work at any moment, even when I was uninspired. That’s one of the things that chance operations makes possible. Or brushing information against information. You can do that without being inspired. In fact, doing it will inspire you, don’t you think?
JR: Yes. I feel the same way about inspiration, and I can see that “intuition” has kept company with that whole cluster of things that has to do with genius and being special.
JC: Yes, yes. That, yes.
JR: The reason why I use it—and maybe there’s a better word—is because I think not enough of us trust the awareness and the quality of attention that can brush information and select things that strike us in strange and interesting and unexpected ways … and give them value.
JC: Right. I don’t object to the mysterious aspect of intuition. Or even inspiration. I mean to say the “Where does it come from?” I like that. But I don’t like the part that would make one person inspired and the next uninspired. I don’t like the political nature of intuition or inspiration.
JR: What I realize is I don’t associate it with those things anymore. I think of intuition as something you can consciously develop, through a kind of discipline of attention; and its being valuable as a resource for your work.
JC: What would you do, for instance?
JR: Well, with my students I do various kinds of language exercises—some of which come out of a Zen sort of spirit. One is in fact related to your “All answers are answers to all questions.” I have them write on a piece of paper a statement that they believe to be the case—trivial or sublime, it doesn’t matter. No rules except that they believe this to be the case. Then I ask them to write a question on another piece of paper—something they genuinely wish to know. We collect these statements and questions in separate piles and shuffle them up. Two students now read from these randomly ordered piles responsively. The first reads the question at the top of her pile, the second reads the first statement as if it were the answer; and of course it is the answer. (laughter) My students are always amazed. They say, how did you get this to work?
JC: Isn’t that marvelous.
JR: What I think it does is help them develop a sense of trust in their ability to make—
JC: To make those connections.
JR: Yes. That’s right. To make meaning.
JC: Make meaning, yes.
JR: And I do a number of things like that—developing intuitions about language by using language in disarming ways, coming to meaning from odd angles. And I started doing this partly in reaction to the idea that some people had intuitions and others didn’t. What I find is all my students can do wonderful things when—
JC: When they realize they can do it without being put down or without needing to be embarrassed. No, I agree.
JR: Yes. And the “intuition” has to do with the fact that our brain takes in so much more than we process at the cognitive level. I think so much of what makes language lush and sensual has to do with experiences and associations we have that are sub-neocortical, that aren’t being processed in logical terms. I don’t know what else to call that, in order to pay attention to that part of language, as well as to its logical levels. We’re noticing on an intuitive level. But there may be a better word, because I agree, it carries that unfortunate baggage. Having said all that, we could talk about how, when we experience art, we are educated or initiated in some way by the experience so that even if we don’t logically assimilate or repeat the experience, it affects the next experience
