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" "I have nothing to say
and I am saying it
and that is poetry
as I need it.
John Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer. A pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments. Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avantgarde and, in the opinion of many, the most influential American composer of the 20th century.
Biography information from Wikiquote
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"I went to a concert upstairs in Town Hall. The composer whose works were being performed had provided program notes. One of these notes was to the effect that there is too much pain in the world. After the concert I was walking along with the composer and he was telling me how the performances had not been quite up to snuff. So I said, "Well, I enjoyed the music, but I didn't agree with that program note about there being too much pain in the world." He said, "What? Don't you think there's enough?" I said, "I think there's just the right amount.
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Nothing more then nothing can be said.
We make our lives by what we love.
Being American, having been trained to be sentimental, I fought for noises … when the war came along, I decided to use only quiet sounds. There seemed to me to be no truth, no good, in anything big.
Somebody asked Debussy how he wrote music. He said: “I take all the tones there are, leave out he one’s I don’t want, and use all the others”. Satie said: “When I was young, people told me; you’ll see when you’re fifty years old. Now I’m fifty. I’ve seen nothing”.
Slowly as the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere – and that is a pleasure.
It is not irritating to be where one is, it is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
If anybody is sleepy, let him go to sleep.
All I know about method is that when I’m not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I’m working, it is quit clear I know nothing.