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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
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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.
Music
Nothing
Owning
Recording
Celebration
Singing
Imagine
Practice
More quotes by John Cage
Art is whatever you can get away with.
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
Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.
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
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.
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
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.
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
Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
John Cage
Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
John Cage
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?
John Cage
When you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas- all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.
John Cage
The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
John Cage
Each moment presents what happens.
John Cage
Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
John Cage
The Indians long ago knew that music was going on permanently and that hearing it was like looking out a window at a landscape which didn't stop when one turned away.
John Cage
No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
John Cage
Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.
John Cage
Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
John Cage
