<<  -- 2 --  Jennifer Paull    UNCAGED JOHN

The front cover proclaims:

'THREE {2}, TWENTY-THREE SIX and TWENTY-SIX' (with hyphens and capital letters as indicated). 'THE FIRST RECORDINGS' stretches across the bottom.

The back cover shows a black and white sketch of Cage looking ferocious and gives the timings and dates of works, adding to figure indigestion. Numbers weave about in layers. (Track) '1' on the CD is in fact 'THREE' adjacent to and slightly above which, is a figure '2'. The text continues '(1991) -- 9 minutes'. This mine of numeric information multiplies like dividing cells. The whole is enclosed within a green plastic CD case or 'jewel box', as I believe they are called, not without a certain degree of poetry, within the American recording industry. My two Cage CDs must surely be amongst the least commercial of the latter. Somehow, I feel certain that he would have approved greatly!

The CD itself has the below-indicated text written in a spiral upon a background of two hemispheres (navy and white: the text becoming white upon the navy, and vice versa).

Eureka! In the centre I decipher the words 'OgreOgress productions COPYRIGHT 1999' (capitalisation as indicated). I have found 'for whom'! There is no external cover indication.

The mixture of upper and lower case letters (totally independent of conventional English punctuation protocol), and the constant rotating of the CD in order to decipher the script, are a 'happening' in themselves!

At the end of the textual whorl, there is the accreditation,

'John Cage
Sentences T
Tibetan Singing Bowl
Calvin College Fine Arts Centre Auditorium
(Grand Rapids, Michigan) -- space'

I presume that 'space' refers to the area in which the recording was made, and that the spiral sentences (text) below, are therefore by John Cage. I do not understand the significance of 'T' unless it applies to Tibet in some way. Perhaps a text about the Vatican would be called 'Sentences V'?

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