Water Walk
John Cage pops a confetti popper. He periodically lifts a knob from a pressure cooker, letting steam gush out before tapering it once more. He waters flowers with a watering can. He places ice and a cocktail into a glass. He later takes a sip from the said glass.
Though these actions may resemble typical scenes at home, they actually produce well-intentioned musical phrases in Cage’s piece Water Walk. As Cage aptly puts it, Water Walk is named as such because “it contains water and [he] walks during its performance”. Save for a grand piano, the 3-minute solo television performance involves “instruments” like the aforementioned household objects , a rubber duckie, 5 radios, and a tape recorder, all of which are strategically placed on stage. Though acts such as smacking a cymbal against water in a bathtub or knocking radios off the table seem as unorthodox as they seem spontaneous, Cage accentuates his intentionality by moving methodically across the stage to play his various instruments and using a stopwatch to time his gestures.
This earnestness combined with Cage’s deceptively simple, almost mundane movements on stage contributes to the audience’s amused, yet uncomfortable reaction. Beforehand, in the interview portion with Garry Moore, Cage emphasizes that he “considers music the production of sound and since [in Water Walk] … [he] produces sound, [he] will call it music.” Moore also attempts to solidify Cage’s credibility as a composer by referring to a news article which corroborates that. However, despite these preconditions, the audience still questions whether the “music” Cage produces with everyday objects is truly that and whether this theatrical display on primetime television is befitting.
These questions beckon the concepts conceived in Carol Duncan’s “The Art Museum as Ritual”. Duncan insists that art museums are ritualistic spaces whose architecture and decorum temporarily remove visitors from reality. This liminality ensures visitors can best contemplate and appreciate the artifacts housed within museums. Moreover, Duncan notes that those with the most influence over museums’ contents shape who is included in a community and its identity. Along those lines, those in the best position to follow museum rituals are the most valued.
The performance hall is akin to a museum in that it similarly encourages audiences to fixate on a live performance. It can also place certain performance conventions and the communities best suited for the hall’s rituals on a pedestal. However, by challenging our perception of what music is, I argue that Cage also challenges the authority of performance halls and the communities who influence them. By emphasizing that music is simply the production of sound, we need not rely so much on the performance hall to witness music. After all, we can find it weaved into our everyday lives. Furthermore, Cage’s grandiose display of music anyone could make pays homage to the inherent creative ability within all of us. To not only find and cherish art in our everyday lives but to craft it as well, regardless of our identity or background.
