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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.

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.
Word
Substitutes
Sound
Piano
Music
Meaningful
Instruments
Sacred
Eighteenth
Organization
Nineteenth
Century
Reserved
Term
Substitute

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One shouldn't go to the woods looking for something, but rather to see what is there.
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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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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.
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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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Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.
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Art is whatever you can get away with.
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Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.
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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
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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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Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.
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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 purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.
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I don't need sound to talk to me.
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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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All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
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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.
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Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.
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Music is a means of rapid transportation.
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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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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
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