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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
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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.
Fear
Possess
Anything
Realization
Nothing
Delight
Need
Thus
Needs
Therefore
Loss
Poetry
Posses
Since
Posse
More quotes by John Cage
Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
John Cage
Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living.
John Cage
It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.
John Cage
As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
John Cage
Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
John Cage
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.
John Cage
We only hear what we listen for.
John Cage
Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
John Cage
The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
John Cage
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.
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
To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
John Cage
In the dark, all cats are black.
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
If this word music is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.
John Cage
Beware of losing what isn't in your head.
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
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
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.
John Cage
Each something is a celebration of the nothing that supports it.
John Cage
