THE MUSHROOM MAN

Famed for 4’33” and other experimental compositions, John Cage had another love in life: fungi. It began in the Great Depression of the 1930s, when hunger drove him to forage near his home in California: ‘I picked one of the mushrooms and went in the public library and satisfied myself that it was not deadly, that it was edible. And I ate it and nothing else for a week.’ (In 1954, he did almost die after another foraging expedition where he picked poisonous hellebore instead of edible skunk cabbage.)

Even as his musical fame grew, Cage supplemented his income by selling wild mushrooms to New York restaurants and by the end of 50s he was teaching classes in both composition and in mushroom ID at the city’s New School. Mushrooms were his specialist subject on an Italian gameshow Lascia o Raddoppia? (Double or Nothing), he rebooted the New York Mycological Society, composed a spoken word piece called Mushrooms et Variationes and co-authored Mushroom Book.

‘I have come to the conclusion that much can be learned about music by devoting oneself to the mushroom,’ he once wrote, but as the piece was humorous he possibly wasn’t in earnest. His delight in mycology was always sincere though: ‘Often I go in the woods thinking after all these years I ought finally to be bored with fungi,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘But coming upon just any mushroom in good condition, I lose my mind all over again. Supreme good fortune: we’re both alive!’

● For more see John Cage: A Mycological Foray (atelier-editions. com)