John Cage's "Rules for Students and Teachers"

John Cage performing 4'33'' at a toy piano

John Cage was a composer whose life spanned most of the 20th century (1912-1992). He was influenced by composers such as Schoenberg, Messiaen and Boulez. He believed in creating compositional space in which musicians and audiences alike could participate in the creation of the music. Cage's style can be thought of as controlled chaos or chance music. For example, he was known to make decisions while he was composing by rolling dice. His most famous piece is 4'33'', which involves a performer with his or her instrument sitting silently for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The purpose of this composition is to explore the sound in the room, the "what might happen" in any given period of time and space. It is about chance in the moment. (A friend of mine performed this piece in a recital. A few of us knew about the piece beforehand, so we brought stuff to throw at him. It was a bit cheeky of us!)

"Fontana Mix" a composition by Cage

Cage is also known for redefining notation, the visual language of music. You can see here an example of his charting of improvisation and preparation--controlled chaos. This can also be called 'aleatoric' music. Often performers are given suggested notes for a given amount of time and they then have to improvise with the material offered. Thus, the performance is just as much determined by the performer as it is by the composer.



Click here to read about a recent dance concert inspired by Cage, performed in a rock quarry. The stage was set up in the round with the dancers in the center and the 150 musicians seated around the outside. The craziest part was that each of the musicians had their own part to play, and each was improvising with a given set of musical ideas. The concert sounds like it was amazing. I wish I could have been there.

Here is John Cage performing one of his pieces, "Water Walk", on a 50's TV show. Fascinating! 



As you can see, his music requires a lot of participation and engagement by musicians and audiences alike. It is not just a matter of just learning notes, or listening to notes and sounds for that matter. Cage's music gives space for listening to others and responding to the whole, or simply for the chance of the moment (e.g., the laughter of a TV audience). Whether or not you like his music, that is a totally different conversation. Mostly, I like the concepts that he is promoting as an example of engagement and participation, even if his music is not really my (or your) cup of tea. 

With this in mind, here are the rules of engagement that I talked about in class. May we learn to play together this year!

John Cage's "Rules for Students and Teachers"

1. Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile. 
2. General duties of a student—pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students. 
3. General duties of a teacher—pull everything out of your students. 
4. Consider everything an experiment. 
5. Be self-disciplined—this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way. 
6. Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make. 
7. The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things. 
8. Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes. 
9. Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think. 
10. Break rules. Even your own rules. Leave plenty of room for X quantities.

"Mozart Mix" by John Cage

 

Welcome to Fall 2010!

Welcome to another year of Constructing the Theological Mosaic. I thought that I would start off the class blog with a few thoughts on why we should do theology:

    I believe that when we, as embodied human beings, experience the world around us, we tend to make certain assumptions about the world and begin to ask big questions. A few classic questions are: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” “What is the meaning of life?” or another way to ask this is “What brings meaning to life?” “Who are these people around me and what is my relationship to them?” “What is the definition of family in such a fragmented and alienated culture?”

    These questions are inherently theological because they ask how we are in the world in relation to that which is not ourselves. In other words, is there anything beyond and/or outside of the individual self? And, if so, what is it?

    We all ask these questions. The problem is, if we don’t take the time to explore and examine our presuppositions, then we are left with half articulated beliefs that seem proper or correct in the moment but don't have real substance for the long haul called life. So, when life happens and we come to the end of our understanding, we tend to either turn to anger and frustration or to simply reject faith all together; especially faith represented by the established church. I think that this is amazingly characteristic of our contemporary culture. How do we respond to this within our culture? Or, more honestly, how do we respond to this within ourselves?

    Again, we can ask the question, "Why do theology?" Well, you are here at this graduate school doing a degree at this particular time and place. I assume that you are interested in theological questions or you would not be here because you would have gone to a different school. However, you are diverse in your goals. Some of you are counseling students, some are training to be pastors and some of you are not sure why you are here . (There is nothing wrong with not really knowing why you are doing a degree. That was me when I went to do my master's degree and now I'm teaching at a seminary. You never know where you'll end up!) In that context, the challenge of this class (which is my task as much as it is your task) is to learn to connect our/your individual questions about life, the universe and everything to the discipline and tradition of Christian theology.

    I would like to challenge you, to charge you with this task: work hard in this class to push your own questions outward in order to connect those personal questions to the wider tradition of theology. In the midst of this, it is OK to disagree with me, with one another and even yourself. (I saw a bumper sticker once that said: “Don’t believe everything you think.” It is a good philosophy when approaching theology!!)

    I believe that theology should be transformative and even life-giving. But, in my own story, it wasn’t until theology was connected to my own questions that I could even understand the broader theological questions. In fact, it wasn’t until I connected theology and music that I became a theologian. Throughout my theological journey, I have worked to connect my questions and my ways of thinking with the traditional questions. It was hard work. I’m still working hard, and that is why I am here at Mars Hill Graduate School teaching. I want to understand how theology connects with life, with us as individuals and how the hard work of individual exploration can connect us back to a wider community that transcends time and space: throughout the world and throughout history. When we sing, when we proclaim and profess, when we preach and when we laugh and cry with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, we do so with Christians throughout the ages and the world. We sing “Holy, holy, holy,” together in the broadest sense of that word.

    Therefore, as we start this class, we need to acknowledge that we are not the first people to ask the ultimate questions. We are also not the first ones to offer answers. It is the height of arrogance to say that we understand the relationship between God and the world better than those believers that lived 50, 150 or 1500 years ago. However, we do understand the world differently. We have a different context and a different Zeitgeist. But to answer these questions in isolation, ignoring the tradition, is naive at best. Despite our attempts to answer these questions in isolation, we should acknowledge that we all have inherited many assumptions and beliefs, often unexamined. In this class, with respect I hope, we will work to question, critique, explore and sometimes even answer these inherited presuppositions.

    So, why do theology? Because it hits us in the intimate places where we live. It shapes the way we are in the world with ourselves and with one another.

To the Task!

Chelle

Reading Report

Here is the link for the READING REPORT, which is due this week.

Peace,
Chelle

Video and an Interesting Article

Here is a link to the video that we watched in class today. This really is the "anti-Church" experience, so please find humor, not instruction, in its contents. ;) The skit is from a show called "That Mitchell and Webb Look."




On a different note, Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times recently wrote an article about the Christian contribution to world aid, especially World Vision. Provocative reading. Here is the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28kristof.html

Enjoy!
Chelle

Assignments Due

Hello to you all!

As dates, classes and assignments have gotten a bit turned around in the past few weeks, I thought that I would just post the remain assignments and due dates for the remainder of the class. Here you go:

1. March 17th: Reading Summary, The Church
2. March 24th: Reading Summary, Eschatology
3. March 31st: Pub Quiz on Millenarianism (based on Stan Grenz's book, The Millennial Maze, chapts 3-6, pgs. 65-173)
4. April 7th: Research Papers/Creative Projects
5. April 14th: Journals

Keep in mind that the reading summaries should be short, they don't have to be a comprehensive overview. The upcoming Pub Quiz will be taken in teams of not more than 5 people (please don't be late!). Let's have a breakfast potluck on that day as well. So think about what you can bring.

Also, if you want to present anything to the class, just let me know. This can be your creative project, a short overview of your research paper, or even "what you learned this year" in your theologian/reading groups. I would like to give space to student sharing!

If you need help on anything, just come talk to either Jordan or myself.

Cheerio!
Chelle

Dr. Serene Jones

I was driving in my car yesterday and was listening to the Tavis Smiley Show. He was interviewing a number of sucessful women in honor of Women's History Month. Included in the list of women was Dr. Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She was talking about her new book Trauma and Grace. I recently purchased this book, so was excited to here her talk about it. This book sounds very good, and I think that at least one student needs to write their research paper on it.

In essence, the book talks about God's grace in the midst of trauma (hence the title, Trauma and Grace!). This sounds like a very integrative book. Jones develops a theology that takes very seriously the trauma that humans experience in life. So, check it out!

Peace,
Chelle

An Interesting Article

Here is an interesting article for all of you. It is about Evangelicals and their propensity to give. Specifically it is about World Vision. Something to make you think about the role of faith-based organizations in the bringing about of social justice.

Enjoy!
Chelle