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Yi in pop culture

moss elk

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I just found this last week,
though I surely heard in in my youth.

Pink Floyd, 1967, Chapter 24

All movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one
Change returns success
Going and coming without error
Action brings good fortune
Sunset
The time is with the month of winter solstice
When the change is due to come
Thunder in the other course of heaven
Things cannot be destroyed once and for all
Change returns success
Going and coming without error
Action brings good fortune
Sunset, sunrise


 
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Freedda

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Hmm, from 1967 when I was 13 years old, though growing up in the Bay Area I may have been listening to the first Grateful Dead album about this time (March 1967). But I have never heard this particular PF song.

It sounds like they were in their Incredible String Band phase at this point. Maybe short-lived?

And I just found this, from a 1965 interview with Bob Dylan:

"Philosophy can't give me anything that I don't already have. The biggest thing of all, that encompasses it all .... It's an old Chinese philosophy and religion, ... there is a book called the "I-Ching", I'm not trying to push it ... but it's the only thing that is amazingly true, period, not just for me. Anybody would know it .... it's a whole system of finding out things, based on all sorts of things. You don't have to believe in anything to read it, because besides being a great book to believe in it's also very fantastic poetry."​

D
 
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floatsmith

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Well, it appears as if the 60s-70s were the heyday for the I Ching in pop culture! Unsurprisingly, perhaps. Immediately, I flashed onto the first verse in Joni Mitchell’s “Amelia,” from her Hejira (1976):
I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens
It was the strings of my guitar
. . . in a song that’s very much concerned with the risks and graces of diving headfirst into the unknown.
 
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Freedda

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.... I flashed onto the first verse in Joni Mitchell’s “Amelia,” from her Hejira (1976):

It was the hexagram of the heavens / It was the strings of my guitar

. . . in a song that’s very much concerned with the risks and graces of diving headfirst into the unknown.
Floatsmith, thanks for share this one! I can't remember for sure if I had listened to it way back when, but it's great to visit (or revisit) it now. One thing struck me, looking at the lyrics:

It was the hexagram of the heavens
It was the strings of my guitar
Amelia it was just a false alarm

... so each verse ends with the refrain, 'Amelia, it was just a false alarm'. I find that interesting. I read that Joni Mitchell wrote this when she was traveling alone cross-country, reflecting both on Amelia Earhart and the loss of a relationship - so it seems to work on at least two levels.

For me, the I Ching reference seems like a sort of questioning of ... what? Her feelings, her perceptions? That it looks like the Heaven hexgram, but is it really? Or is it her guitar's stings, or maybe just six jet vapor trails .... or - as Amelia as her witness - is it just a false alarm?

David Crosby covered the song on his 2017 album Sky Trails album - 47 years after it was written! He says: "I've always wanted to sing that song. I love that song! What a stunning piece of work ... the two levels of it talking about Amelia Earhart and taking about her own love life at the same time, so eloquently, with such a beautiful set of words ...."

Thanks again, best, D
 
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Freedda

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John Cage

'Left to itself art would have to be something very simple - it would be sufficient for it to be beautiful. But when it's useful it should spill out of just being beautiful and move over to other aspects of life so that when we're not with the art it has nevertheless influenced our actions or our responses.' - John Cage.

Though perhaps not technically in the realm of 'pop culture', John Cage (1912–1992) was an American composer and visual artist who was well known - and for many, influentual.

He is perhaps best known as an avant-garde, 20th Century composer. One of his most famous pieces was 4' 33' (1952) where his 'score' instructed a musician to come on stage, and then to be there for four minutes and 33 seconds - in silence. I believe the idea was that the 'piece of the music' would include the sounds that were generated while the musician was silently sitting or standing there: the sounds of people coughing, of cars going by outside, of one person maybe whispering, 'what the heck is going on?' (More on his use of the Yi in music, below.)

He also worked as visual artist, creating paintings and prints. This video clip talks about how he worked over a number of years at Crown Point Press in the San Francisco Bay Area .... and used 'chance' and the I Ching in his work.

And you can read more about John and his work at Crown Point here
John-Cage-Yi.jpg

More on Cage's chance operations in music

He also applied 'chance operations' to composing music. I have only a vugue idea of how this might have worked: he would create 8x8 grids on pieces of paper and each square would represent some aspect of a piece of music: one sheet would have 64 different tempo options, another would have 64 volume options, another would have 64 notes or short musical motiffs. and so on - and of course some of these options would include a rests or periods silence.

He would then (as I understand it) select from a pre-made list of hexgrams - which he had already thrown the coins for (he sometimes did this while traveling), so ... he'd first select square #14 for a particular note or motiff, then square #33 for the lenght that that was to be played, then square #63 which would indicate the volume, and so forth. He would then put these altogher (which I think would indicate layers of information about the music), and 'compose' a piece from this.

Cage was domestic partners and a collaborator for many decades with Merce Cunningham, a famous modern dancer. Merce often used the I Ching in order to determine the sequence of his dances, and often dancers were not informed of the order until the night of the performance.
 
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floatsmith

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For me, the I Ching reference seems like a sort of questioning of ... what?
That’s a great question. I wonder if she intended for the reference to be about Hexagram 1, or maybe it was just to the I Ching as a symbol in itself? It’s easy for me to read it in my imagining of the details of the consciousness of the song’s protagonist as being Hexagram 1 — up and leaving one’s relationship and driving solo across the country having visions seems like a whole lot of Yang to me!
And I would have mentioned John Cage were it not for my own discernment to filter him out of the realm of “pop culture”! But there he is. His music never seemed to me to convey very much feeling — it usually seemed much more concerned with formalistic and processual possibilities (like letting chance be the editor), which I know is fully valuable in its own right. And his chance-based composition technique does certainly pull at the spiritual insight into the “order” of the Universe (a sort of meditative decentralization of focus, structure).
 
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Freedda

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Thanks Floatsmith: more Cage
I wonder if she intended for the reference to be about Hexagram 1, or maybe it was just to the I Ching as a symbol in itself?
When I read and heard the lyrics, 'it was the hexagram of the heaven,' what came to mind for me is Quan, Creating, Heaven (Hex. 1), since I image six unbroken jet vapor trails in the sky. But the beauty of this song - as with perhaps all music and art - is that we can each make it our own.

His music never seemed to me to convey very much feeling — it usually seemed much more concerned with formalistic and processual possibilities (like letting chance be the editor), ....

I agree. One question I have (and I'd like to look into) is,did Cage use the Yi as a wisdom/divination tool - as in he paid attention to the text and images; or did he just use it as a sort of random number generator? I imagine it might have been a bit of both. I have some books about Cage and a few interviews, so I will explore this more at some point.

And pure conjecture on my part - I get the sense that Cage was pushing the envelop a bit: I imagine he could have used the Yi and Chance Operations, and then encorporated these into more 'conventional' compositions, but I get the sense he wanted to 'keep it pure'. As you said, he seemed more 'concerned with formalistic and processual possibilities' than what his compositions might sound like (or if they were pleasing, or were melodic, or ....).

It's like the difference between a writer using the Yi as an 'idea generator' to come up with different aspects of plot, setting, character ... versus using the Yi to generate a random string of words and associations (and to maybe randomly decide the punctuation, sentence and paragraph structure, placement of the words on the page, order in which they are read, etc.).

I think you are correct that Cage was not really a 'pop culture' figure, however he did make an appearance on the TV game show 'What's My Line?' - and you can't get any more pop culture than that, though perhaps Cage's performance was less so ....


On 'What's My Line?' (1950-1967) celebrity panelists would question contestants in order to determine their occupation, i.e. their "line (of work)". Cage came on as a contestant, but the host, Garry Moore decided to skip the questions, and just have him perform his piece, 'Water Walk'.

Cage began using 'chance operations' or the Yi around 1951 and included it in most of his works after that. 'Water Walk' is from 1959 (when I was around 3-4 years old!), and the host mentions Cage using a stop watch because each sound/action 'must fall mathematically at a precise point' ... which I can imagine might be a 'game show' explanation of chance operations.

Here are three more pieces, from 1939-41 that came before Cage's involvement with Zen Buddhism or the Yi. While still 'modern' in their sound, they feel a bit less random and frenetic than some of his other pieces. They remind me of Gamalan music from Bali.

* Cage's First Construction,
* Second Construction, and
* Third Construction.

Of this time in Cage's life, one author writes:

'In the late 1930s and early ‘40s he was a young composer who favored rhythm over harmony and the chaotic promise of random, atmospheric noise over the grammar of Western classical music with its “endless arrangements of the old sounds.” But he hadn’t, in either case, completely figured out why ....'

Best, D
 
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svenrus

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The danish composer Per Nørgård has made some variations:

"Fire over Water"


"I Ching" :


(Full Screen / HD)

He is an avantgarde composer. Don't know about me representing him under the category Pop Culture ? His reaction to that ??
 
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