the third thing
I have to say that I love the number 3. I love the idea of the “third thing,” something that came, I think, from a conversation I had over ten years ago, about the work of John Cage. The third thing is the magical idea or image that comes to the viewers/listeners/receivers of art when they are offered a metaphor. Two things are placed together in some kind of relationship to one another. Out of the rubbing up of the two, previously unrelated, things, the mind/imagination makes some kind of sense. Usually the sense, the image or idea that comes from the sparks created by the two things is something way greater, more complex and inexplicable than the two things by themselves seem to offer.
Cage was working with random juxtaposition of elements in live performance. Every night the audience would pick pieces of paper out of a hat and determine what order the pieces of the performance would be done and which bits of music would go with what action etc. This way the “third thing” was something that the artist had little control over. Each night, the audience would see new metaphors created for them and have their own experiece of magical, electric new meaning.
I liked the idea of the “third thing” so much that I had this picture of Tenniel’s from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tattooed on my left shoulder. Throughout Lewis Carroll’s provocative children’s book, very surprising items are juxtaposed with brilliant effects. I’ve always felt that Carroll used the ridiculous and absurd images and ideas in his stories to open children’s minds to the unexpected truths of the world, rather than allowing them to believe the school-day message that “1 + 1 = 2″ and it will always be so and that is how the world operates.
I love the liberation that is inherent in the very act of creating and receiving metaphor. Two things are known. The third thing is the unknown, the field of infinite possibility, the hitherto uncharted brilliance of your own mind, the scope of human imagination.
