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What Is The Purpose Of Writing Music? One Is, Of Course, Not Dealing With Purposes But Dealing With Sounds. Or The Answer Must Take The Form Of A Paradox: A Purposeful Purposeless Or A Purposeless Play. This Play, However, Is An Affirmation Of Life--not An Attempt To Bring Order Out Of Chaos Nor To Suggest Improvements In Creation, But Simply A Way Of Waking Up To The Very Life We’re Living, Which Is So Excellent Once One Gets One’s Mind And One’s Desires Out Of Its Way And Lets It Act Of Its Own Accord.

-John Cage

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What Is The Purpose

John Cage

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What Is The Purpose Of Writing Music? One Is, Of Course, Not Dealing With Purposes But Dealing With Sounds. Or The Answer Must Take The Form Of A Paradox: A Purposeful Purposeless Or A Purposeless Play. This Play, However, Is An Affirmation Of Life--not An Attempt To Bring Order Out Of Chaos Nor To Suggest Improvements In Creation, But Simply A Way Of Waking Up To The Very Life We’re Living, Which Is So Excellent Once One Gets One’s Mind And One’s Desires Out Of Its Way And Lets It Act Of Its Own Accord.

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I Have Nothing To Say, And I Am Saying It.

With Just One Musician, You Can Really Do An Unlimited Number Of Things On The Inside Of The Piano, If You Have At Your Disposal An Exploded Keyboard.

The First Question I Ask Myself When Something Doesn't Seem To Be Beautiful Is Why Do I Think It's Not Beautiful. And Very Shortly You Discover That There Is No Reason.

A Meal Without Mushrooms Is Like A Day Without Rain.

The World Is No Longer A Romantic Place; Some Of Its People Still Are However, And Therein Lies The Promise. Don't Let The World Win.

In The Nature Of The Use Of Chance Operations Is The Belief That All Answers Answer All Questions.

To See, One Must Go Beyond The Imiagination And For That One Must Stand Absolutely Still As Though At The Center Of A Leap.

People Paying Attention To Vibratory Activity, Not In Reaction To A Fixed Ideal Performance, But Each Time Attentively To How It Happens To Be This Time, Not Necessarily Two Times The Same. A Music That Transports The Listener To The Moment Where He Is.

After I Had Been Studying With Him For Two Years, Schoenberg Said, ‘in Order To Write Music, You Must Have A Feeling For Harmony.’ I Explained To Him That I Had No Feeling For Harmony. He Then Said That I Would Always Encounter An Obstacle, That It Would Be As Though I Came To A Wall Through Which I Could Not Pass. I Said, ‘in That Case I Will Devote My Life To Beating My Head Against That Wall.’

So Somebody Has Talent? So What? Dime A Dozen. And We're Overpopulated. Actually We Have More Food Than We Have People And More Art. We've Gotten To The Point Of Burning Food. When Will We Begin To Burn Our Art?

The World, The Real Is Not An Object. It Is A Process.

The World Is Teeming; Anything Can Happen.

Anything Can Happen

Art Is Sort Of An Experimental Station In Which One Tries Out Living.

When You Make Music You Are Acting As A Philosopher. You Can Either Do That Consciously Or You Can Do It Unconsciously, But You're Doing It.

Art Is Whatever You Can Get Away With.

Each Something Is A Celebration Of The Nothing That Supports It.

There Will Always Be Critics Eager To Fashion Opinions For The Lazy And Incapable.

The Emotions - Love, Mirth, The Heroic, Wonder, Tranquility, Fear, Anger, Sorrow, Disgust - Are In The Audience.

College: Two Hundred People Reading The Same Book. An Obvious Mistake. Two Hundred People Can Read Two Hundred Books.

If My Work Is Accepted, I Must Move On To The Point Where It Is Not.

Food, One Assumes, Provides Nourishment; But Americans Eat It Fully Aware That Small Amounts Of Poison Have Been Added To Improve Its Appearance And Delay Its Putrefaction.

I Want To Change My Way Of Seeing, Not My Way Of Feeling. I Was Perfectly Happy About My Feelings.

Everyday Is A Beautiful Day, Everything Is Pleasing

Every Something Is An Echo Of Nothing

I Like Being Moved. I Don't Like Being Pushed.

Try As We May To Make A Silence, We Cannot.

Sound And Music

Everything You Do Is Music, And Everywhere Is The Best Seat.

All I Know About Method Is That When I Am Not Working I Sometimes Think I Know Something, But When I Am Working, It Is Quite Clear I Know Nothing.

One Day When I Was Studying With Schoenberg, He Pointed Out The Eraser On His Pencil And Said, 'this End Is More Important Than The Other.' After Twenty Years I Learned To Write Directly In Ink.

Don't Try To Create And Analyze At The Same Time. They're Different Processes.

A Sound Does Not View Itself As Thought, As Ought, As Needing Another Sound For Its Elucidation, As Etc.; It Has Not Time For Any Consideration--it Is Occupied With The Performance Of Its Characteristics: Before It Has Died Away It Must Have Made Perfectly Exact Its Frequency, Its Loudness, Its Length, Its Overtone Structure, The Precise Morphology Of These And Of Itself.

If Something Is Boring After Two Minutes, Try It For Four. If Still Boring, Then Eight. Then Sixteen. Then Thirty-two. Eventually One Discovers That It Is Not Boring At All.

An Artist Conscientiously Moves In A Direction Which For Some Good Reason He Takes, Putting One Work In Front Of The Other With The Hope He'll Arrive Before Death Overtakes Him.

Art's Purpose Is To Sober And Quiet The Mind So That It Is In Accord With What Happens.

My Favorite Piece [piece Of Music] Is The One We Hear All The Time If We Are Quiet.

Composing For The Prepared Piano Is Not A Criticism Of The Instrument. I'm Only Being Practical.

Now That We Have Everything We Need, We Discover That There Is Almost Nothing That We Have That We Want

Ideas Are One Thing And What Happens Is Another.

I Imagine That As Contemporary Music Goes On Changing In The Way That I'm Changing It What Will Be Done Is To More And More Completely Liberate Sounds From Abstract Ideas About Them And More And More Exactly To Let Them Be Physically Uniquely Themselves. This Means For Me: Knowing More And More Not What I Think A Sound Is But What It Actually Is In All Of Its Acoustical Details And Then Letting This Sound Exist, Itself, Changing In A Changing Sonorous Environment.

It Is Better To Make A Piece Of Music Than To Perform One, Better To Perform One Than To Listen To One, Better To Listen To One Than To Misuse It As A Means Of Distraction, Entertainment, Or Acquisition Of 'culture.'

Nothing More Than Nothing Can Be Said.

Some People Take Music Too Seriously, And Some Don't Take It Seriously Enough, Others Take It Just Right.

Which Is More Musical, A Truck Passing By A Factory Or A Truck Passing By A Music School? Are The People Inside The School Musical And The Ones Outside Unmusical? What If The Ones Inside Can't Hear Very Well, Would That Change My Question?

I Am Trying To Check My Habits Of Seeing, To Counter Them For The Sake Of Greater Freshness. I Am Trying To Be Unfamiliar With What I'm Doing.

The Purpose Of Music Is To Sober And Quiet The Mind, Thus Making It Susceptible To Divine Influences.

The Highest Purpose Is To Have No Purpose At All. This Puts One In Accord With Nature, In Her Manner Of Operation.

What Right Do I Have To Be In The Woods, If The Woods Are Not In Me.

Music Is Edifying, For From Time To Time It Sets The Soul In Operation.

If You Don't Have Enough Time To Accomplish Something, Consider The Work Finished Once It's Begun.

Time Management

It Is Not Irritating To Be Where One Is. It Is Only Irritating To Think One Would Like To Be Somewhere Else.

Theatre Takes Place All The Time - Wherever One Is - And Art Simply Facilitates Persuading One This Is The Case.

Combine Nursing Homes With Nursery Schools. Bring Very Old And Very Young Together: They Interest One Another.

The Attitude I Take Is That Everyday Life Is More Interesting Than Forms Of Celebration, When We Become Aware Of It. That When Is When Our Intentions Go Down To Zero. Then Suddenly You Notice That The World Is Magical.

Look At Everything. Don't Close Your Eyes To The World Around You. Look And Become Curious And Interested In What There Is To See.

We Need Not Destroy The Past. It Is Gone.

An Error Is Simply A Failure To Adjust Immediately From A Preconception To An Actuality.

Not One Sound Fears The Silence That Extinguishes It. And No Silence Exists That Is Not Pregnant With Sound.

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Get Yourself Out Of Whatever Cage You Find Yourself In.

Finding Yourself

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Where Does Beauty Begin? Where Does It End? Where It Ends Is Where The Artist Begins.

Beware Of Losing What Isn't In Your Head.

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As Mcluhan Says, Everything Happens At Once.

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The Act Of Listening Is In Fact An Act Of Composing.

Which Is More Musical: A Truck Passing By A Factory Or A Truck Passing By A Music School?

When You Start Working, Everybody Is In Your Studio- The Past, Your Friends, Enemies, The Art World, And Above All, Your Own Ideas- All Are There. But As You Continue Painting, They Start Leaving, One By One, And You Are Left Completely Alone. Then, If You Are Lucky, Even You Leave.

The Material Of Music Is Sound And Silence. Integrating These Is Composing.

No One Can Have An Idea Once He Starts Really Listening.

One Shouldn't Go To The Woods Looking For Something, But Rather To See What Is There.

You Can Feel An Emotion; Just Don't Think That It's So Important.

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When I Went To The Analyst For A Kind Of Preliminary Meeting, He Said, 'i'll Be Able To Fix You So That You'll Write Much More Music Than You Do Now.' I Said, 'good Heavens! I Already Write Too Much, It Seems To Me.' That Promise Of His Put Me Off.

Our Poetry Now Is The Realization That We Possess Nothing. Anything Therefore Is A Delight (since We Do Not Posses It) And Thus Need Not Fear Its Loss.

The White Paintings Came First; My Silent Piece Came Later.

People Who Aren't Artists Often Feel That Artists Are Inspired. But If You Work At Your Art You Don't Have Time To Be Inspired.

I Don't Need Sound To Talk To Me.

Everything I See Is Something I Haven't Memorized.

To Accept Whatever Comes, Regardless Of The Consequences, Is To Be Unafraid.

I Believe The Use Of Noise To Make Music Will Increase Until We Reach A Music Produced Through The Aid Of Electrical Instruments Which Will Make Available For Musical Purposes Any And All Sounds That Can Be Heard.

We Only Hear What We Listen For.

It Was At Harvard Not Quite Forty Years Ago That I Went Into An Anechoic [totally Silent] Chamber Not Expecting In That Silent Room To Hear Two Sounds: One High, My Nervous System In Operation, One Low, My Blood In Circulation. The Reason I Did Not Expect To Hear Those Two Sounds Was That They Were Set Into Vibration Without Any Intention On My Part. That Experience Gave My Life Direction, The Exploration Of Nonintention. No One Else Was Doing That. I Would Do It For Us. I Did Not Know Immediately What I Was Doing, Nor, After All These Years, Have I Found Out Much. I Compose Music.

I Needed Another Basis For Musical Structure. This I Found In Sound's Duration Parameter, Sound's Only Parameter Which Is Present Even When No Sound Is Intended.

I Am Trying To Be Unfamiliar With What I'm Doing.

We Carry Our Homes Within Us Which Enables Us To Fly.

I Never Had A Hat, Never Wore One, But Recently Was Given A Brown Suede Duck-hunting Hat. The Moment I Put It On I Realized I Was Starved For A Hat. I Kept It Warm By Putting It On My Head. I Made Plans To Wear It Especially When I Was Going To Do Any Thinking. Somewhere In Virginia, I Lost My Hat.

One Need Not Fear For The Future Of Music.

My Work Became An Exploration Of Non-intention.

Music Is A Means Of Rapid Transportation.

Value Judgments Are Destructive To Our Proper Business, Which Is Curiosity And Awareness.

A Finished Work Is Exactly That, Requires Resurrection.

Out Of The Work Comes The Work.

What I'm Proposing, To Myself And Other People, Is What I Often Call The Tourist Attitude - That You Act As Though You've Never Been There Before. So That You're Not Supposed To Know Anything About It. If You Really Get Down To Brass Tacks, We Have Never Been Anywhere Before.

There Is No Such Thing As An Empty Space Or An Empty Time. There Is Always Something To See, Something To Hear. In Fact, Try As We May To Make A Silence, We Cannot.

If Someone Says Can't, That Shows You What To Do.

When We Separate Music From Life We Get Is Art.

Discord Occasions A Momentary Distress To The Ear, Which Remains Unsatisfied, And Even Uneasy, Until It Hears Something Better. I Am Convinced...that Provided The Ear Be At Length Made Amends, There Are Few Dissonances Too Strong For It. Disharmony, To Paraphrase Bergson's Statement About Disorder, Is Simply A Harmony To Which Many Are Unaccustomed.

We Are Involved In A Life That Passes Understanding And Our Highest Business Is Our Daily Life.

The Grand Thing About The Human Mind Is That It Can Turn Its Own Tables And See Meaninglessness As Ultimate Meaning.

I Certainly Had No Feeling For Harmony, And Schoenberg Thought That That Would Make It Impossible For Me To Write Music. He Said, 'you'll Come To A Wall You Won't Be Able To Get Through.' So I Said, 'i'll Beat My Head Against That Wall.'

For Myself And My Own Experience Now, I Don't Really Need Any Music. I Have Enough To Listen To With Just The Sounds Of The Environment. I Listen To The Sounds Of 6th Avenue.

Why Do You Not Do As I Do? Letting Go Of Your Thoughts As Though They Were The Cold Ashes Of A Long Dead Fire?

Now That Things Are So Simple, There's So Much To Do.

Each Moment Presents What Happens.

What Is The Purpose Of Writing Music? One Is, Of Course, Not Dealing With Purposes But Dealing With Sounds. Or The Answer Must Take The Form Of A Paradox: A Purposeful Purposeless Or A Purposeless Play. This Play, However, Is An Affirmation Of Life--not An Attempt To Bring Order Out Of Chaos Nor To Suggest Improvements In Creation, But Simply A Way Of Waking Up To The Very Life We’re Living, Which Is So Excellent Once One Gets One’s Mind And One’s Desires Out Of Its Way And Lets It Act Of Its Own Accord.

Until I Die There Will Be Sounds. And They Will Continue Following My Death. One Need Not Fear About The Future Of Music.

We Are Simple-minded Enough To Think That If We Were Saying Something We Would Use Words. We Are Rather Doing Something. The Meaning Of What We Do Is Determined By Each One Who Sees And Hears It.

Percussion Music Is Revolution. Sound And Rhythm Have Too Long Been Submissive To The Restrictions Of Nineteenth Century Music. Today We Are Fighting For Their Emancipation. Tomorrow, With Electronic Music In Our Ears, We Will Hear Freedom. At The Present Stage Of Revolution, A Healthy Lawlessness Is Warranted. Experiment Must Necessarily Be Carried On By Hitting Anything-tin Pans, Rice Bowls, Iron Pipes-anything We Can Lay Our Hands On. Not Only Hitting, But Rubbing, Scraping, Making Sound In Every Possible Way...what We Can't Do Ourselves Will Be Done By Machines Which We Will Invent.

It Is Not Futile To Do What We Do. We Wake Up With Energy And We Do Something. And We Make, Of Course, Failures And We Make Mistakes, But We Sometimes Get Glimpses Of What We Might Do Next.

Wherever We Are, What We Hear Is Mostly Noise. When We Ignore It, It Disturbs Us. When We Listen To It, We Find It Fascinating.

I Remember Loving Sound Before I Ever Took A Music Lesson. And So We Make Our Lives By What We Love.

Our Business In Living Is To Become Fluent With The Life We Are Living, And Art Can Help This.

The Indians Long Ago Knew That Music Was Going On Permanently And That Hearing It Was Like Looking Out A Window At A Landscape Which Didn't Stop When One Turned Away.

If There Are Questions Then, Of Course, There Are Answers, But The Final Answer Makes The Questions Seem Absurd.

In The Dark, All Cats Are Black.

Good Music Can Act As A Guide To Good Living.

As Far As Consistency Of Thought Goes, I Prefer Inconsistency.

We Are Not Committed To This Or That. We Are Committed To The Nothing In-between, Whether We Know It Or Not.

A Mind That Is Interested In Changing...is Interested Precisely In The Things That Are At Extremes. I'm Certainly Like That. Unless We Go To Extremes, We Won't Get Anywhere.

I Can't Understand Why People Are Frightened Of New Ideas. I'm Frightened Of The Old Ones.

There Was A German Philosopher Who Is Very Well Known, His Name Was Immanuel Kant, And He Said There Are Two Things That Don’t Have To Mean Anything, One Is Music And The Other Is Laughter. Don’t Have To Mean Anything That Is, In Order To Give Us Deep Pleasure.

It's Useless To Play Lullabies For Those Who Cannot Sleep.

My Favourite Music Is The Music I Haven't Yet Heard. I Don't Hear The Music I Write: I Write In Order To Hear The Music I Haven't Yet Heard.

Whether I Make Them Or Not, There Are Always Sounds To Be Heard And All Of Them Are Excellent.

If You Develop An Ear For Sounds That Are Musical It Is Like Developing An Ego. You Begin To Refuse Sounds That Are Not Musical And That Way Cut Yourself Off From A Good Deal Of Experience.

All Great Art Is A Form Of Complaint

In That Case I Will Devote My Life To Beating My Head Against That Wall.

...we Make Our Lives By What We Love.

The Responsibility Of The Artist Consists In Perfecting His Work So That It May Become Attractively Disinteresting.

I Was Shocked At College To See One Hundred Of My Classmates In The Library All Reading Copies Of The Same Book. Instead Of Doing As They Did, I Went Into The Stacks And Read The First Book Written By An Author Whose Name Began With Z. I Received The Highest Grade In The Class. That Convinced Me That The Institution Was Not Being Run Correctly. I Left.

Everything We Do Is Music." (classical Composer)(from: 4'33")

Classical Composers

Paper Should Be Edible, Nutritious. Inks Used For Printing Or Writing Should Have Delicious Flavors. Magazines Or Newspapers Read At Breakfast Should Be Eaten For Lunch. Instead Of Throwing One's Mail In The Waste-basket, It Should Be Saved For The Dinner Guests.

We're Breaking All Of The Rules, Even Our Own Rules, And How Do We Do That? By Leaving Plenty Of Room For X Quantities.

Our Intention Is To Affirm This Life, Not To Bring Order Out Of Chaos, Nor To Suggest Improvements In Creation, But Simply To Wake Up To The Very Life We're Living, Which Is So Excellent Once One Gets One's Mind And Desires Out Of Its Way And Lets It Act Of It's Own Accord.

My Favorite Music Is The Music I Haven't Yet Heard

All God's Religions ... Have Not Been Able To Put Mankind Back Together Again.

There Are Some Good People In It, But The Orchestra As A Whole Is Equivalent To A Gang Bent On Destruction.

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