Drawing for Changes and Disappearances No. 33 1979 - 1982

This drawing by John Cage looks like a map, or maybe a constellation, rendered in graphite on paper. It makes me think about trying to chart the unchartable. I wonder what Cage was thinking as he made this. The drawing looks very detailed and schematic, almost scientific, and yet there’s a feeling of openness, like a score or a set of instructions for something that hasn’t yet happened. Each line, each shape, seems to hold a possibility, a change, a disappearance. The numbered lists scattered around the page make me think of musical notation, and how Cage was inspired by Eastern philosophy and chance operations to compose. It's like he was exploring the boundaries between intention and accident, control and release. And in a way, that's what drawing is all about—it's a conversation between the artist and the materials, a dance between the known and the unknown. We are all in conversation with each other.