I was going to say, ‘Before we finish with John Cage ..’ but I think I’m never really going to be finished with John Cage, so there’s this. We were walking in the mud yesterday, following the footpath along the south side of the River Stour, right across the water from the Cattawade Nature Reserve, which has no public access, which I think is very cool. It wasn’t meant to be an expedition, just a Sunday afternoon walk, and that’s what it was until we hit the mud.
I mean, I knew it had been raining, I knew that the footpaths in these parts had muddy patches here and there, but I wasn’t expecting the full Glastonbury–Woodstock-Somme experience. And as a matter of fact it was actually far worse than it looks in these pictures.
It was hard work, walking through this stuff, but after a while, as Billy Shakespeare almost said, ‘I was in mud, stepp’d in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er.’
Thinking of Shakespeare helped a bit, and also thinking that John Cage had written a book on the subject, with Lois Long, one of his collaborators on The Mushroom Book. This one was The Mud Book. I’ve never seen a copy 'in the flesh,' but apparently it looks like this:
To be honest, I wasn't really in the mood for making 'pies and cakes.'
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