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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

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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.
Experience
Music
Need
Avenue
Enough
Avenues
Needs
Sounds
Really
Listen
Environment
Sound

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We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
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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.
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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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I don't need sound to talk to me.
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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.
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In an utter emptiness anything can take place.
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Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
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In the nature of the use of chance operations is the belief that all answers answer all questions.
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...we make our lives by what we love.
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As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.
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All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
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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.
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Out of the work comes the work.
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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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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.
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The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
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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.
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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
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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.
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When we separate music from life we get is art.
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