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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
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.
Possess
Soon
Poetry
Realize
Realizing
Nothing
Poetic
More quotes by John Cage
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.
John Cage
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.
John Cage
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?
John Cage
We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
John Cage
Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
John Cage
Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
John Cage
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.
John Cage
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.
John Cage
Guy Nearing told us it's a good idea when hunting mushrooms to have a pleasant goal, a waterfall for instance, and, having reached it, to return another way. When, however, we're obliged to go and come back by the same path, returning we notice mushrooms we hadn't noticed going out.
John Cage
I don't need sound to talk to me.
John Cage
Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.
John Cage
...we make our lives by what we love.
John Cage
Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
John Cage
Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
John Cage
The world is teeming anything can happen.
John Cage
Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing.
John Cage
Each moment presents what happens.
John Cage
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.
John Cage
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.
John Cage
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.
John Cage
