Indeterminacy 157

I was asked to play my Sonatas and Interludes in the
home of an elderly lady in Burnsville, North
Carolina, the only person thereabouts who owned a
grand piano. I explained that the piano preparation
would take at least three hours and that I would
need a few additional hours for practicing before
the performance. It was arranged for me to start
work directly after lunch. After about an hour, I
decided to take a breather. I lit a cigarette and
went out on the veranda, where I found my hostess
sitting in a rocking chair. We began chatting. She
asked me where I came from. I told her that I’d been
born in Los Angeles but that as a child I was raised
both there and in Michigan; that after two years of
college in Claremont, California, I had spent
eighteen months in Europe and North Africa; that,
after returning to California, I had moved first
from Santa Monica to Carmel, then to New York, then
back to Los Angeles, then to Seattle, San Francisco,
and Chicago, successively; that, at the moment, I
was living in New York in an apartment on the East
River. Then I said, “And where do you come from?”
She said, pointing to a gas station across the
street, “From over there.” She went on to say that
one of her sons had tried to persuade her to make
a second move, for now she lived alone except for
the servants, and to come and live with him and his
family. She said she refused because she wouldn’t
feel at home in a strange place. When I asked where
he lived, she said, “A few blocks down the street.”

- John Cage