John Milton Cage Jr. (1912–92) was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage’s romantic partner for most of their lives.
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An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
—John Cage
Topics: Mistakes, Failures
We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn’t speak or talk like a human being, that doesn’t know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. 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.
—John Cage
Ideas are one thing, and what happens is another.
—John Cage
Topics: Inaction, Procrastination, Getting Going
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
—John Cage
We need not destroy the past. It is gone.
—John Cage
Topics: Past, past-and-present
We are involved in a life that passes understanding: our highest business is our daily life.
—John Cage
Topics: Time Management
To accept whatever comes, regardless of the consequences, is to be unafraid.
—John Cage
Topics: Courage, Difficulty
We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.
—John Cage
Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, scraping, making sound in every possible way…What we can’t do ourselves will be done by machines which we will invent.
—John Cage
Where does beauty begin and where does it end? It ends where the artist begins.
—John Cage
Topics: Beauty
It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
—John Cage
Topics: Opportunities, Reality
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
If someone says can’t, that shows you what to do.
—John Cage
Topics: Challenges, Determination, One liners
An artist conscientiously moves in a direction which for some good reason he takes, putting one work in front of the other with the hope he’ll arrive before death overtakes him.
—John Cage
Topics: Art
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