Cage offered to cook me dinner that first night. I accepted and for the first time in my life I saw an artichoke. It had a string around it and I didn't know how to eat it. We also had stewed tomatoes and parsley which I didn't like much, but tried to eat (For over 30 years he was the bus driver and cook for the Merce Cunningham Dance company so he was really a pretty good cook).

I made an incredibly stupid social mistake that evening. In Cage's humility in serving me, I momentarily thought of myself as superior. It was only a nano-moment, but he saw it, smiled in an avuncular and forgiving way, and kept preparing the meal.

Afterwards he asked if I wanted to play chess. I knew from my studies that he had played with Marcel Duchamp and considered Duchamp to be the greatest artistic mind in the 20th century, as well as a being a world class rated chess player. We played, vigorously. He beat me easily but when I refused to die he complimented greatly and generously "Mr. Dukes, you have pluck".
Cage had so much giftedness that it was not a diminishment for him to give to others amply, which made it easy to feel good about myself.

Mr. Cage told me he was going to premiere Renga with Apartment House 1776 with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra on September 30, 1976. He showed me the score he was working on and it seemed amazingly complex, and almost, but not quite, incomprehensible
                                 
Seji Osawa
                                                                          
Boston Symphony Orchestra

 

Marcel Duchamp

I was broke as a snake, and a week later I wrote him and asked him how to get tickets. If I'd have been more honest, I would've said "Would you give me a free ticket?". Here, is his reply:

 

The night was over. We were very drunk and I went out into the New York City night, smiling from ear to ear...

In a day before iPhones, the internet and fourteen years before digital cameras, I did not take one picture of us together. At 21, I thought this illustrious time would last forever...