nonhuman anthropology

Noticing inspires artists as well as naturalists. American composer John Cage (1912-1992) was a mushroom hunter who thought noticing mushrooms and noticing sounds in music were related skills. In contrast to other musicians, he wanted a music that forced listeners to attend to all the sounds around them, whether composed or incidental; noticing mushrooms was a way of teaching this open yet focused attention. In one of his compositions, one-minute anecdotes are performed in random order to draw listeners to attend to indeterminacy (also the name of the piece). Many of the stories are about people’s interactions with mushrooms. Mushrooms are unpredictable; they help one listen. In this entry (#113), Cage is explicit:[4]

Music and mushrooms:

two words next to one
another in many dictionaries.
Where did he
write The Three-Penny Opera?
Now he’s
buried below the grass at the
foot of High Tor.
Once the season changes
from summer to fall,
given sufficient rain,
or just the
mysterious dampness that’s in the
earth, mushrooms
grow there,
carrying on, I
am sure, his
business of working with
sounds.
That we have no ears to hear the
music the spores shot off
from basidia make obliges us
to busy ourselves microphonically.

Basidia are part of mushroom reproductive organs; from basidia, spores are ‘shot off’ into the air. One mushroom, the ‘cannonball fungus’ (Sphaerobolus stellatus), throws out its spore mass with a sometimes-audible pop (but not from basidia). For most mushrooms, however, the shooting-off of spores cannot be heard by human ears. In the sounds we miss, Cage wants us to find inspiration for music.

(via ‘Arts of Inclusion, or, How to Love a Mushroom’ - Anna Tsing)