Indeterminacy 79

I was never psychoanalyzed. I’ll tell you how it
happened. I always had a chip on my shoulder about
psychoanalysis. I knew the remark of Rilke to a
friend of his who wanted him to be psychoanalyzed.
Rilke said, “I’m sure they would remove my devils,
but I fear they would offend my angels.” When I went
to the analyst for a kind of preliminary meeting,
he said, “I’ll be able to fix you so that you’ll
write much more music than you do now.” I said,
“Good heavens! I already write too much, it seems
to me.” That promise of his put me off. ¶ And then
in the nick of time, Gita Sarabhai came from India.
She was concerned about the influence Western music
was having on traditional Indian music, and she’d
decided to study Western music for six months with
several teachers and then return to India to do what
she could to preserve the Indian traditions. She
studied contemporary music and counterpoint with
me. She said, “How much do you charge?” I said,
“It’ll be free if you’ll also teach me about Indian
music.” We were almost every day together. At the
end of six months, just before she flew away,
she gave me the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
It took me a year to finish reading it.

- John Cage