Yesterday morning, we turned on the office radio to hear excited discussion about the merits or otherwise of a photo in the Australian Women's Weekly that pictures Julia Gillard knitting. Orgy of the semiologists (continued)...
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"Alan Watts gave a party that started in the afternoon, New Year’s Eve, and lasted through the night and the following day. Except for about four hours which we spent napping we were never without food or drink. Alan Watts lived near Millbrook. His cooking was not only excellent but elaborate. There was, for instance, I forget just when, a meat pie in the shape of a large loaf of bread. Truffles ran through the meat, which had been wrapped first in crepes and then in the crust, in which had been inscribed in Sanskrit “Om.” Joseph Campbell, Jean Erdman, Mrs. Coomaraswamy, and I were the guests. Jean Erdman spent most of the time knitting. Alan Watts, Mrs. Coomaraswamy, and Joseph Campbell conversed brilliantly about the Orient, its mythologies, its arts, and its philosophies. Joseph Campbell was concerned at that time about the illustration of his Zimmer book, Philosophies of India. He was anxious to find a picture which would include certain and several symbols, and though he had searched his own library and several public ones, he was still looking for the right picture.
I said, “Why don’t you use the one in Jean Erdman’s knitting book?” Joseph Campbell laughed because he knew I hadn’t even seen the picture.
Mrs. Coomaraswamy said, “Let me look at it.” Jean Erdman stopped knitting and gave her the book. Mrs. Coomaraswamy began interpreting the picture, which was of a girl in a sweater standing in a landscape. Everything, it turned out, referred precisely to the subjects with which Joseph Campbell was concerned, including the number in the upper right-hand corner."
John Cage,
Indeterminacy
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