“I have nothing to say and I am saying it, and that is poetry as I need it.” – John Cage

 

Silence, true silence, is a rarity in our modern world. We steep ourselves in sound from the moment we wake until we lay our heads down once again. Whether this is by choice in the form of music, videos, news, television, or the noise that occurs all around us – traffic, airplanes, the sounds of the natural world, clips of strangers’ conversations on the street and more – our minds have adapted to a world of noise. For many, the sudden experience of silence can be a truly jarring moment, an instant in which one is confronted with the ringing in one’s own ears or the sound of one’s breath and heartbeat. Some experienced an enforced dampening of the sounds of vibrant life as the pandemic took hold and the world became muffled. We seek silence at times, feeling the pull of a quiet forest or the shelter of a room to ourselves. And yet perhaps the sounds of life are part of the necessary social structure that our human minds have come to rely on.

Robert(a) Marshall spoke to us from New York City in early August. Having just moved to Prospect Heights they say they are OK for the moment despite the world being a bit of a mess. For the last 15 years, Robert(a) has been working on a biography of Carlos Casteneda, a controversial figure. This ties into their own interest in what’s real and what’s not and our perceptions of things. Casteneda himself, among other things, started a cult that played with ideas of perception, claiming to have gleaned his own knowledge from a Yaqui Sorcerer. What his concepts really consisted of were reworkings of radical theories in anthropology and sociology that call into question all sorts of assumptions. One tenet that he held onto was that reality is an agreed-upon idea of the world. This, of course, ties in quite well to the culture of misinformation in which we find ourselves today. To hear more about Robert(a)’s research on Carlos Casteneda and more, listen to the complete interview.

Sir Norman Rosenthal says that in some ways he is “yesterday’s man” although for a period of about 30 years he was responsible for all the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. The most important of these was toward the beginning of his career that introduced several new German artists, including Joseph Beuys, who subsequently became very well-known. Now retired, he still works hard to keep up with the goings on of the art world. He had an illustrious career and was responsible for some truly iconic exhibitions. Rosenthal never studied art or art history, a student of history he fell into the art world because he genuinely enjoys art as well as music. There is no point, he says, to becoming involved with art unless you love it. To hear more from this enthralling interview with a true giant of the art world, listen to the complete interview.