Indeterminacy 153

Coming back from an all-Ives concert we’d attended
in Connecticut, Minna Lederman said that by
separating his insurance business from his
composition of music (as completely as day is
separated from night), Ives paid full respect to the
American assumption that the artist has no place in
society. (When Mother first heard my percussion
quartet years ago in Santa Monica, she said, “I
enjoyed it, but where are you going to put it?”) But
music is, or was at one time, America’s
sixth-largest industry — above or below steel, I
don’t remember which. Schoenberg used to say that
the movie composers knew their business very well.
Once he asked those in the class who intended to
become professional musicians to put up their hands.
No one did. (Uncle Walter insisted when he married
her that Aunt Marge, who was a contralto, should
give up her career.) My bet is that the phenomenal
prices paid for paintings in New York at the present
time have less to do with art than with business.
The lady who lived next door in Santa Monica told
me the painting she had in her dining room was worth
lots of money. She mentioned an astronomical sum.
I said, “How do you know?” She said she’d seen a
small painting worth a certain amount, measured it,
measured hers (which was much larger), multiplied,
and that was that.

- John Cage