google.com, pub-0418880821635173, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 Everything Zen: John Cage on the Purpose of Writing Music

October 12, 2015

John Cage on the Purpose of Writing Music

Thought of the Day:

“What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life–not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.”

— John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings

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