Zen gives the compulsive achiever something better to be—enlightened. And Geoffrey Hendricks, for whatever reason, works the vein of Sartori art.

His friend John Cage’s compositions of silence are the kind of work one might casually expect of a Zenroshi—a sort of illustration of the doctrine (Cage said resisted sound was noise, accepted sound music). Hendricks might be flattered but probably not too surprised if one characterized his work as coming on like correct answers to ninth-Century Zen koans. He meditated on a mound of earth on top of his wedding ring in the architectural omphalos of the 69th Regimental Armory during the 1971 Avant Garde Festival, then published a journal of the event, Ring Piece, that described his resistance to the fiendish attempts to break his concentration which took the form of his friend John Lennon saying “Hello,” or a pushy journalist trying to get a statement. Read More