Confidential to Mark Zuckerberg
Dear Mark:
First, I hope you haven't missed me these past three months. I haven't missed you, I must admit. I've been doing more real things than clicking around on your site; among the real I count holding pressed tree pulp in my hands and following it page after page. Here are some excerpts from a delightful, even breathtaking, book by Kay Larson—Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists. I found it in Powell's Books in Portland several years ago, when Amy and I got a delicious weekend day to roam the city while Grandma Grace spent time with Japhy.
I fell into a habit in the bookstore, established when I was fresh out of college: I would check various areas of the bookstore: literature, poetry, Americana, Young Adult Sci-Fi. Sheet Music and books on Art. And in those sections, what about my favorite authors (sometimes saved for last, as a suspenseful treat)? Paul Auster, Leslie Marmon Silko, John Cage. Did they have any new work out? Any used editions I could afford?
This was how we discovered things in the analog days: by touch. I was a blind man running my hands down the spines of the books in each aisle, reading by feel... In those first post-college days, I didn't know anything about Cage or the others, either. I think I might have discovered him in the stacks: Hey! What are you doing here with your big smile, laughing at me? Oh, with me? Ok! And what's this, a book called SILENCE? I must inquire. If I found myself reading cross-legged in the store, and I had nine dollars, I could take home a battered volume.
Such it was with Kay Larson that particular day in Portland. I had long lost my Cage library—during a move that was supposed to be temporary, I gave my books to Kevin Hoffman to caretake, and when I never went back to New York, he got to keep the books. There are only a few I miss. I didn't want to try to replace the Cage; I felt that new editions would have lost the pixie dust of being used, and my having read those exact pages originally. Shouldn't I remember what had sunk into my bones the first time? This Larson, however, was new to me. A biography! But also telling of Suzuki, Zen, the art movements of the 30s, 40s, 50s, when Cage created his famous "silent" piece 4'33" and investigated chance operations, a music that blurred with life so greatly that a walk down the street, the chittering of birds, the passing of a jet plane, was cause for exhilaration. I sat down in the aisle.
After getting home, however, I let the book languish on my own shelf for years while other urgencies occupied me. Then at the right time: This summer, Amy loaned, to our friend Caroline, Kerouac's Dharma Bums, and I decided to re-read the story that helped spark our climb up Desolation Peak (and Japhy's name!), then after that turned again to Gary Snyder, Dögen and the zen haiku that I love. Here was Cage awaiting me, so patient all this time!
But that's enough digressing. Here's what made me think of you, Mark, and I wanted to share. So says Cage, via Larson's book:
(p. 198) There is a Zen text entitled, The Huang Po Doctrine of Universal Mind, which has been extremely meaningful for me. It contains this magnificent statement, "Imitate the sands of the Ganges who are not pleased by perfume and who are not disgusted by filth." This could be the basis of any useful ethic we are going to need for a global village. We are going to have to get over the need for likes and dislikes. (1)
(p. 202) You can become narrow-minded, literally, by only liking certain things, and disliking others. But you can become open-minded, literally, by giving up your likes and dislikes and becoming interested in things. I think Buddhists would say "As they are, in and of themselves," whether they are seen as aspects of nirvana, or whether they are seen as aspects of samsara, daily life. (2)
(p. 208) Why do you spend your time and mine by trying to get value judgments? Don't you see that when you get a value judgment, that's all you have? They are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness. (3)
Mark: I don't think curiosity can be satisfied by an app. Your instinct rings true, that relationships are the key to meaning. But I don't think relationships can be bonded by an app, either. There's no silence in your platform, no listening time. It was so busy for me, and the intentions all bent on promoting ego-centric content. I know, that's ridiculous coming from a person on a website which bears his own name. (Do I contradict myself? Very well then...) But at least there's no profit motive here. And there are quite a few questions. Do you feel me?
—Bob
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(1) Nisker, Wes. 1986. "John Cage and the Music of Sound/ Sound of Music." Inquiring Mind: A Journal of the Vipassana Community 3, No. 2 (Winter): 1-4.
(2) Ev Grimes, in Kostelanetz, ed. 1988/1994, 231.
(3) Richard Kostelanetz, "Conversation with John Cage," in Kostelanetz, ed. 1970/1991, 27.