Quote

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.

John Cage

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John Cage
Age: 79 †
Born: 1912
Born: September 5
Died: 1992
Died: August 2
Composer
Illustrator
Music Theorist
Musician
Musicologist
Painter
Philosopher
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
LA
California
John Milton Cage Jr.
John Milton Cage
Jr.
John Milton
Jr. Cage
J. C.
Four
Inspirational
Discovers
Two
Sixteen
Stills
Thirty
Still
Eventually
Music
Boring
Trying
Eight
Something
Minutes

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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
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Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.
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Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
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The grand thing about the human mind is that it can turn its own tables and see meaninglessness as ultimate meaning.
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The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.
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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.
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Each moment presents what happens.
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Artists talk a lot about freedom. So, recalling the expression free as a bird, Morton Feldman went to a park one day and spent some time watching our feathered friends. When he came back, he said, You know? They're not free: they're fighting over bits of food.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.
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Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens.
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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.
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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.
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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
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When we separate music from life we get is art.
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Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
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Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.
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