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The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.

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.
Artist
Become
May
Work
Attractively
Perfecting
Consists
Responsibility
Interest

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Everyday is a beautiful day, Everything is pleasing
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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.
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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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Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.
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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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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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My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard
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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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No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
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If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.
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All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
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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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The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.
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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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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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I don't need sound to talk to me.
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People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
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The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing.
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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.
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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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