Indeterminacy 147

When I first went to Paris, I did so instead of returning to
Pomona College for my junior year. As I looked around, it was
Gothic architecture that impressed me most. And of that
architecture I preferred the flamboyant style of the fifteenth
century. In this style my interest was attracted by balustrades.
These I studied for six weeks in the Bibliothèque Mazarin,
getting to the library when the doors were opened and not leaving
until they were closed. Professor Pijoan, whom I had known at
Pomona, arrived in Paris and asked me what I was doing. (We were
standing in one of the railway stations there.) I told him. He
gave me literally a swift kick in the pants and then said, “Go
tomorrow to Goldfinger. I’ll arrange for you to work with him.
He’s a modern architect.” After a month of working with
Goldfinger, measuring the dimensions of rooms which he was to
modernize, answering the telephone, and drawing Greek columns,
I overheard Goldfinger saying, “To be an architect, one must
devote one’s life solely to architecture.” I then left him, for,
as I explained, there were other things that interested me,
music and painting for instance. ¶ Five years later, when
Schoenberg asked me whether I would devote my life to music, I
said, “Of course.” After I had been studying with him for two
years, Schoenberg said, “In order to write music, you must have
a feeling for harmony.” I explained to him that I had no feeling
for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter
an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall
through which I could not pass. I said, “In that case I will
devote my life to beating my head against that wall.”

- John Cage