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It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.

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.
Think
Thinking
Like
Irritating
Somewhere
Else
Would

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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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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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If this word music is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.
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Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
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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?
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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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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.
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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
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In the dark, all cats are black.
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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.
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I don't need sound to talk to me.
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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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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
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...we make our lives by what we love.
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All great art is a form of complaint
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There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable.
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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
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Everyday is a beautiful day, Everything is pleasing
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It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.
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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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