Indeterminacy 81

(Salvador Dali)

Once when Lois Long was on a mushroom
walk led by Guy Nearing,
a mushroom was found that was quite
rare. Guy Nearing told
Lois Long that it was Pleurotus
masticatus. They then
walked along and Lois Long,
realizing she had already
forgotten the name of the mushroom,
said to Guy Nearing,
“I just can’t get the name
of that mushroom into my head.
In fact,
I have a terrible time remembering
any of these Latin names.”
Guy Nearing said,
“When you don’t know the name
of a mushroom, you
should say it first to the
person in front of you,
and then to the person
in back of you.
Soon, you’ll
find, you remember it.”

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 163

Mr. Ralph Ferrara drives a Studebaker Lark
which is mashed at both ends.
Sometimes the car requires to be
pushed in order to run. One
Sunday when the mushroom class met at
10:00 A.M. at Suffern, Mr. Ferrara
didn’t arrive. Next week he
told me he’d arrived late, gone
to Sloatsburg, gathered a few
mushrooms, gone home,
cooked dinner, and two of his
guests were immediately ill but not
seriously. At the last
mushroom field trip, November
1, 1959, we ended at my
house, drank some stone fences,
and ate some Cortinarius
alboviolaceous that Lois Long cooked.
She said to Ralph Ferrara,
“Mr. Cage says that there’s
nothing like a little mushroom poisoning
to make people be on time.” He
said, “Oh, yes.
I’m always first in the parking lot.”

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 167

Mr. Romanoff is in the mushroom class.
He is a pharmacist
and takes color slides of the fungi
we find. It was he
who picked up a mushroom I brought to
the first meeting of the class at the
New School, smelled it,
and said, “Has
anyone perfumed this mushroom?” Lois
Long said, “I don’t think
so.” With each plant Mr. Romanoff’s
pleasure is, as one might
say, like that of a child.
(However,
now and then children come on the
field trips and they don’t
show particular delight over what is
found. They try
to attract attention to themselves.)
Mr. Romanoff
said the other day,
“Life is the sum total of all the
little things that happen.”
Mr. Nearing smiled.

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 168

Tucker Madawick is seventeen years old.
He is Lois
Long’s son by her first husband.
It was dinnertime.
He came home
from his job in the Good Samaritan
Hospital in Suffern and said
to his mother, “Well,
dear, I won’t be
seeing you for a couple of days.”
Lois Long said,
“What’s up?” Tucker said,
“Tomorrow night after
work, I’m driving to
Albany with Danny Sherwood for a
cup of coffee, and
I’ll be back for work the following
day.” Lois Long said,
“For heaven’s sake,
you can have a
cup of coffee here at home.”
Tucker Madawick replied,
“Don’t be a square.
Read Kerouac.”

- John Cage

Indeterminacy 111

Lois Long, Esther Dam, Ralph Ferrara,
and I were in the Haverstraw cemetery gathering
Tricholoma personatum. An elderly lady with
a hat on, standing by while a man she was with
was tending a grave, happened to notice us.
She called out, asking what we were doing
there. We said we were looking for mushrooms.
Her voice rose slightly as she asked whether
Lois Long’s Volkswagen which was parked nearby
belonged to one of us. The next thing she
asked, her voice sharp-edged, was whether
we had loved ones buried there. Hearing no
one of us did, she spoke firmly and loudly.
“Well, I don’t like it; and I don’t
think any one else would like it. If the
mushrooms grow here, let them!” Meanwhile
the gentleman with her paid no attention.
He just went on doing what he was doing.
And we, walking dutifully toward the little
car, passed by quantities of our favorite
mushrooms, making not the slightest attempt
to pick them. As we drove off the woman
was yelling. “Get out!” she
screamed, “get out and never come back!”

- John Cage