John Cage is the godfather of American conceptual art. He shattered traditional musical forms and audience expectations with his invention of the "prepared" piano (he altered the sound of the piano by placing screws, coins or rubber bands on its strings), his use of the percussion orchestra and his radical--to some disturbingly--minimal musical compositions.

His impact on the visual arts has been scarcely less profound. Along with Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham et al he presented the first happening at Black Mountain College in 1952. Lately he's returned to traditional visual artistry (he abandoned painting for music at an early age), completing his fifth set of etchings at Oakland's Crown Point Press early this year. He writes, too. His most recent publication, Empty Words, is a collection of musical tone poems published by Wesleyan University Press in 1979. Cage is an American cultural institution who's happily managed to avoid institutionalization.

In a sense this defiance of institutionalization, of categorization, was the raison d'etre behind what Cage modestly--cagily--called a "lecture" delivered on January 4th at Crown Point Press. Entitled James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie; An Alphabet, Cage prefaced his reading/performance with an explanatory introduction. He recalled once seeing a large exhibition of Dada in Dusseldorf. All of it had metamorphosed into art with the exception of Duchamp's work. For Cage this relevance and liveliness constitutes Duchamp's lasting contribution. It also defines his own sensibility. "Such artists (Duchamp, Joyce, Satie) remain forever useful," he observed. "Useful, I mean, outside the museums, libraries and conservatories in each moment of our daily lives." He concluded his introductory remarks with an elegant description of the work to come: "The piece is not an alphabet--it is a fantasy. I did not want to remove, so to speak, the punctuation from our experience of modernism, to illustrate it with something like its own excitement."

Cage sits down to read at a large wooden table with a microphone. Casually attired in blue denim pants and a Levi jacket, he looks both older and younger than his 67 years. Time has smoothed away the rough edges of physiognomy. A beatific smile suggests Zen realms of consciousness. Cage's shining eyes, behind dark-rimmed glasses, embrace the crowd--a not-too-large gathering of Crown Point Press staff and friends. "This is my third year at the Press," he says. "This is a celebration."

As Cage begins to read, I'm surprised. I had expected, without thinking about it, a piece on the order of past readings from Empty Words, that is a musical abstraction in which words function phonically, akin to instruments. Instead Cage's one hour "lecture" was a blank verse reverie on the state of the material and spiritual worlds. James Joyce, Marcel Duchamp, Erik Satie: An Alphabet somehow marries the heartfelt, Utopian didacticism of Buckminster Fuller's poetry, the absurdist irreverence of Bob Dylan's songs and the delicious silliness of Lewis Carroll's verse. Cage's reading was punctuated by frequent and unseemly giggles from the audience.

What follows are a few sample stanzas from An Alphabet (the capitalization and punctuation are mine): "In a temple/just outside Calcutta/inhabited by the host of Sri Ramakrishna/that has been standing on one hand in ecstacy for over 93 years/Duchamp picks up an inhalator and breathes Philadelphia. Buckminster Fuller immediately answers/congratulating Duchamp on all of his work/past, present and future. He then goes on to say/my plan for a regeneratively changing balance/between unlimited human needs and limited human resources/is available. I am encouraged by the Chinese people/by the fact that one quarter of mankind/or one fifth, if that's what it is/is now relatively intelligent/not just stupidly political/the way the rest of the world is."

In An Alphabet, Satie, Joyce and Duchamp are ghosts. (The "play" begins: "What a joy to have them on the same stage/same time/even though the subject of the play/is the curtain that separates them.") They cavort with the ghosts of the living and the dead--a pantheon of history's greats. Figures as disparate as Homer, Brigham Young and Carrie Nation make their appearances as do Nijinsky, Marshall McLuhan, Houdini, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Mozart, Mao, Philip Glass, Joseph Beuys, and Ibsen among many, many others.

Nor is any subject spared Cage's scrutiny. Everything from art critics to the energy crisis is touched by his pen. Cage began with a remark by Buckminster fuller to the effect that in considering anything one should start with five ideas rather than one. So Cage took five as a maximum, one as a minimum for the number of sentient or non-sentient begins interacting.

The system Cage employed is fairly complex, involving the 26 letters of the alphabet and the use of an unabridged dictionary to locate stage properties for the play. The process, however, is totally invisible to the audience. The wonder of Cage's method is that such tight conceptual structuring results in the appearance of total freedom and spontaneity.

Equally interesting is Cage's use of the classic library form, the mesostich. This ancient device is easier (and in this case more fun) to illustrate than to explain:

                In the first place alMost
                               immediAtely
                           duchamp caRries a whisk broom
                            and if a Critic
                            drops somEthing he whisks it up
                  and puts it in a vaLise
                                markeD
                                     Unsigned memorabilia
      he is thinking of investing in Cuisinart
                                 to cHop up this collection
                                 to mAke it into a large single work untitled
in advance later to be known as infraMation
                                    sPatial

Again, this device was invisible to the audience. Cage clued us into its existence after the reading.