Kay Larson is an acclaimed art critic, columnist, and author who wrote feature articles and a column of art criticism for New York magazine for fourteen years. When that job ended, she began Zen Buddhist practice at Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York; her teacher was John Daido Loori, an American roshi. She has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in many types of publications: Artnews, the Village Voice, Vogue, Artforum, and numerous other sources including international newspapers, popular press, and museum exhibition catalogues. After a decade of intensive Zen, she now practices in the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
What can be analyzed in my work, or criticized,
are the questions that I ask. —John Cage
Kay Larson writes:
This book has been a fifteen-year journey into the world of John Cage, who was teacher to so many, and who taught me, too. As real Zen teachers do, he modeled a way of life for me. This kind of teaching doesn’t need physical proximity. It is best displayed within the life of the person who teaches. What choices did he make? Why did he make them? What questions did he ask? Cage modeled a life that lives on in the daily moments of those who knew, loved, and were taught by him.
