A Mycological Foray: A new look at John Cage and his mushroom obsession (2020)(glasstire.com)
glasstire.com
A Mycological Foray: A new look at John Cage and his mushroom obsession (2020)
https://glasstire.com/2020/07/11/a-mycological-foray-a-new-look-at-john-cage-and-his-mushroom-obsession/
34 comments
> He accidently poisoned himself? Unheard of for passionate mushroom hunters!
Poisoning yourself with false hellebore suggests he might have been a little unhinged. You’d have to be pretty impulsive to do that.
Poisoning yourself with false hellebore suggests he might have been a little unhinged. You’d have to be pretty impulsive to do that.
Speaking of unhinged mushroom hunting behavior, it's interesting to look at the New York Mycological Society (NYMS) Newsletter from 2017: https://www.newyorkmyc.org/newsletters/NYMS_17_2E.pdf
>On May 15th last year, we took an early trip to our family cabin in the central Adirondacks to see if we could catch the beginning of morel season there.
>We walked down a dirt road for a mile until we came to numerous splits in the road.
>While taking a closer look through a loupe, Riitta, who was a few steps ahead, squealed with delight. She had found something special! But it was not a Morchella americana. She knew it as the choice edible Korvasieni (Finnish for “ear mushroom”). We knew it as the deadly poisonous Gyromitra esculenta, the false morel.
>We knew that these were potentially deadly poisonous, but that some people do eat them when prepared properly.
>However, according to Wikipedia “although it is still commonly parboiled before preparation, evidence suggests that even this procedure may not make Gyromitra escu-lenta entirely safe for consumption, thus raising concerns of risk even when prepared properly. When consumed, the principal active agent, gyromitrin, is hydrolyzed into the toxic compound monomethylhydrazine (MMH - a com-ponent of rocket fuel). The toxin affects the liver, central nervous system, and sometimes the kidneys. Symptoms of poisoning involve vomiting and diarrhea several hours after consumption, followed by dizziness, lethargy and head-ache. Severe cases may lead to delirium, coma and death after 5-7 days.” Yikes!
>Rinse the mushrooms thoroughly in plenty of running cold water. Repeat once more the boiling and rinsing of the mushrooms. Drain the mushrooms and use for cooking like any edible mushroom.After doing this with all the windows open in our kitchen, trying our best to avoid inhaling the poisonous fumes, and cautiously boiling twice for 11 minutes, we cooked up the false morels in lots of butter and onions.
>On May 15th last year, we took an early trip to our family cabin in the central Adirondacks to see if we could catch the beginning of morel season there.
>We walked down a dirt road for a mile until we came to numerous splits in the road.
>While taking a closer look through a loupe, Riitta, who was a few steps ahead, squealed with delight. She had found something special! But it was not a Morchella americana. She knew it as the choice edible Korvasieni (Finnish for “ear mushroom”). We knew it as the deadly poisonous Gyromitra esculenta, the false morel.
>We knew that these were potentially deadly poisonous, but that some people do eat them when prepared properly.
>However, according to Wikipedia “although it is still commonly parboiled before preparation, evidence suggests that even this procedure may not make Gyromitra escu-lenta entirely safe for consumption, thus raising concerns of risk even when prepared properly. When consumed, the principal active agent, gyromitrin, is hydrolyzed into the toxic compound monomethylhydrazine (MMH - a com-ponent of rocket fuel). The toxin affects the liver, central nervous system, and sometimes the kidneys. Symptoms of poisoning involve vomiting and diarrhea several hours after consumption, followed by dizziness, lethargy and head-ache. Severe cases may lead to delirium, coma and death after 5-7 days.” Yikes!
>Rinse the mushrooms thoroughly in plenty of running cold water. Repeat once more the boiling and rinsing of the mushrooms. Drain the mushrooms and use for cooking like any edible mushroom.After doing this with all the windows open in our kitchen, trying our best to avoid inhaling the poisonous fumes, and cautiously boiling twice for 11 minutes, we cooked up the false morels in lots of butter and onions.
Yeah there are a lot of mushrooms that are listed as deadly poisonous in field guides, but that lots of people eat anyway. And there are other mushrooms that are listed as edible, but that kill some of the people who eat them.
I've never eaten false morels, although if I were at Noma or something I'd probably try the soup. Eating them outside of a geographic region where there is a history of eating them is definitely especially questionable, although I don't know that I'd necessarily consider it unhinged. At least they knew exactly what they were eating and made an informed decision.
I've never eaten false morels, although if I were at Noma or something I'd probably try the soup. Eating them outside of a geographic region where there is a history of eating them is definitely especially questionable, although I don't know that I'd necessarily consider it unhinged. At least they knew exactly what they were eating and made an informed decision.
Right. Even within a species, your mileage may vary. Sweet and bitter almonds are the same species, but the bitter variety contains cyanide (as do the pits of their close relatives, the peach and apricot). As few as 5-10 bitter almonds can be fatal to a child.
This just makes me want persipan.
>Poisoning yourself with false hellebore suggests he might have been a little unhinged.
I would have thought his music alone was plenty of evidence that he was more than a little unhinged.
I would have thought his music alone was plenty of evidence that he was more than a little unhinged.
“Obsessed” is society’s word for “passionate” outside of approved areas. Spend all your time and hundreds of thousands of dollars on wine or golf and you’re an enthusiast. On splotchy canvases by louche cigarette-smoking sybarites in tight jeans and you’re just getting started. On mushrooms and you’re “obsessed.”
This article did not address whether he ever took magic mushrooms. I was hoping to find out!
Kind of funny my last thoughts when leaving the article was I wonder if he also took magic mushrooms and if that influenced his music at all?
To my knowledge, magic mushrooms weren't really known to Westerners until this article[1] was published in Life in 1957. And it wasn't until the 1960's that Timothy Leary and others helped make them a part of popular culture.
If he did consume them, then the music he composed before those dates probably wasn't influenced by them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeking_the_magic_mushroom
If he did consume them, then the music he composed before those dates probably wasn't influenced by them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeking_the_magic_mushroom
It is kind of crazy, but magic mushrooms were completely unknown to westerners before that 1957 article, despite the fact that magic mushrooms grow natively all over Europe. All we need is ONE person to have described taking them before 1957 to show otherwise — but there is no evidence of it.
>"(His class on mushroom identification at the New School for Social Research was immensely popular.) How Cage accidentally poisoned himself and some friends"
I just read it and find this delightful, independently of John Cage. This formulation begs the question about how many of the students of this "immensely popular" class were later accident prone.
Maybe is voluntary humour from the part of the author, but I'd not bet on that.
I just read it and find this delightful, independently of John Cage. This formulation begs the question about how many of the students of this "immensely popular" class were later accident prone.
Maybe is voluntary humour from the part of the author, but I'd not bet on that.
Mushrooms are fascinating. Can't blame this guy for digging them. Did you know that mushrooms (fungi to be precise) are not a plant and are not an animal? They are so special that they have their own biological kingdom. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungus)
Also interesting if you're into this kind of stuff: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-before-trees-...
did you know water is wet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water
Please don't be an asshole in HN comments. Posts like this are extremely damaging. If you know more than someone else, that's a great chance to share some of what you know, so we all can learn. If you don't want to do that, that's fine, but then please don't post. Damaging the commons, as you did here, is not a good choice.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Also, can you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or snarky comments in general? You've done it repeatedly, unfortunately. We ban such accounts because we're trying for a different sort of culture here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Also, can you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or snarky comments in general? You've done it repeatedly, unfortunately. We ban such accounts because we're trying for a different sort of culture here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
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Not just that but they are genetically closer to animals than to plants.
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The authors were on Mushroom Revival Podcast recently: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/mushroom-revival-podca...
So far no comments upon the artist/composer J.Cage interesting and intellectual, perhaps soon to be lost to time. Is he the American analog to Joseph Beuys or maybe the American zeitgeist makes them incomparable?
Honestly, I think he is kind of a fraud musically.
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Really? I mean he has got compositional chops, but not nearly enough to be considered a great composer. Where I find Cage to be a genius is his mastery of generating unique sonic elements. Like his prepared piano peices, as a peice of music, aren't great : but the individual sounds he coaxes out of the piano are awesome. His works are incredibly fertile grounds for sampling, and I draw a lot of inspiration from his use of texture as a compositional theme.
Like his pieces about cacti : can't remember what its called - but the whole thing is just like goopy, bubbly, drippy sounds. Very interesting stuff to me.
Like his pieces about cacti : can't remember what its called - but the whole thing is just like goopy, bubbly, drippy sounds. Very interesting stuff to me.
Honestly, can you support that nasty claim without revealing that you have only a vague understanding that he did some wacky thing called 4'33"?
Frankly, your lack of citation and supportive reasoning does more to validate the Dunning-Kreuger effect than it does to criticize Cage.
Frankly, your lack of citation and supportive reasoning does more to validate the Dunning-Kreuger effect than it does to criticize Cage.
Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself, and certainly not by crossing into personal attack.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
There's no "mushroom obsession", JC simply did all the usual stuff that a passionate mushroom hunter would do.
He wrote a book about mushrooms? Obsessed! He accidently poisoned himself? Unheard of for passionate mushroom hunters!