John Cage Has a Secret

John Cage has always been a source of controversy. There has always been constant discussion regarding whether his compositions are real sources of music or just random compilations of sound. Yet, when one hears Water Walk, it is difficult to understand this. Cage’s defense had always been that he believes and orchestrated group of sounds is considered music, and Water Walk proves this to an amazing degree. He uses everyday household objects to construct a piece of music that delivers fear, tension, and laughter. The music is much less rooted in pure sound, but the visuals of performing the composition.

 Cage walks through this group of items with a stoic, emotionless tone, performing his tasks as if they were a daily routine. Yet, when one steps back and listens to the composition of the sounds that he is putting together, they begin to fit and elicit an emotion from the listener. If listening to the pure sounds of Water Walk, it delivers a feeling of tension and fear, and it seems as if all these random assortments of sounds are about to result in some massive payoff. Yet there is no finale, it simply ends, almost designed in a Rube Goldberg-esque fashion to have a series of unrelated events handle a meaningless task.

 Some of sounds, from putting a vase of flowers in a bathtub, to dropping a cymbal in a pool of water feel humorous and ridiculous from a visual standpoint, but the sounds alone that they create are unearthly and confusing. It’s this mixture of emotion from the senses that makes the piece so understandable and relatable; it creates an amazing conflict in the listener that truly marks the piece’s success. It’s nearly impossible to recreate John Cage’s performances today, yet when it’s done, they always carry different feels, because his performance is so rooted in his actions and specific choice of items.

In an auditory understanding alone, the piece is rooted in the themes of water. In a 1960 performance of Water Walk on the game show I’ve Got a Secret, he explains that the piece is titled as such simply because there’s water involved, and he walks a lot during it. The performance is largely covered by laughter, though Cage himself jokingly approves of it, saying he prefers laughter to tears. It’s almost as if the audience’s reaction to his work is part of the piece itself. There are moments in this tense, strange auditory composition that surprise the viewer. The I’ve Got a Secret performance especially reflects that, as a portion of the piece that involves turning on a radio had to be edited due to union conflicts regarding who should plug in the radios. His edit, involving hitting the top of them, and ultimately pushing them off the table, elicits a roar of laughter from the audience.

That reaction perfectly captures Water Walk. It’s music because it uses these strange compositions of sound to elicit an emotion, but it simultaneously exists as a performance piece, as the result of merely hearing it and actually viewing it are two completely difference experiences.