01c. 1938 ADI can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.John Cage / quote ↗
03c. 1938 ADFreedom from likes and dislikes, the sudden sense of identification, the spirit of comedy.John Cage / quote ↗
06c. 1938 ADIf you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.John Cage / quote ↗
07c. 1938 ADThe emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.John Cage / quote ↗
08c. 1938 ADWhich is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?John Cage / quote ↗
09c. 1938 ADWhat 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 / quote ↗
10c. 1938 ADnothing is accomplished by writing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by playing a piece of musicour ears are now in excellent condition.John Cage / quote ↗
11c. 1938 ADAfter I had been studying with him for two years, Schoenberg said, "In order to write music, you must have a feeling for harmony." I explained to him that I had no feeling for harmony. He then said that I would always encounter an obstacle, that it would be as though I came to a wall through which I could not pass. I said, 'In that case I will devote my life to beating my head against that wall.John Cage / quote ↗
12c. 1938 ADFrost interviewing Noel Coward and Margaret Mead. Sir Noel's view of life is Sir Noel. Mead's mind is large and open, like Buckminster Fuller's. She found thoughts dull that suggest that men are superior to animals or plants.John Cage / quote ↗
13c. 1938 ADRemove God from the world of ideas. Remove government, politics from society. Keep sex, humor, utilities. Let private property go.John Cage / quote ↗
14c. 1938 ADIt would be better to have no school at all than the schools we now have. Encouraged, instead of frightened, children could learn several languages before reaching age of four, at that age engaging in the invention of their own languages. Play'd be play instead of being, as now, release of repressed anger.John Cage / quote ↗
15c. 1938 ADWhy is it that children, taught the names of the months and the fact that there are twelve of them, don't ask why the ninth is called the seventh (September), the tenth called the eight (October), the eleventh called the ninth (November), the twelfth called the tenth (December)?John Cage / quote ↗
16c. 1938 ADOnly chance to make the world a success for humanity lies in technology, grand possibility technology provides to do more with less, and indiscriminately for everyone. Return to nature as nature pre-technologically was, attractive and possible as it still in some places is, can only work for some of us.John Cage / quote ↗
17c. 1938 ADPower and profit structures're out of cahoots with current technology. Aware of new inventions, corporations put them aside, waiting for competitive reasons until they're obliged to use new gimmicks.John Cage / quote ↗
18c. 1938 ADI 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.John Cage / quote ↗
19c. 1938 ADValue judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.John Cage / quote ↗
20c. 1938 ADI haven't been to a movie for three months of Sundays. I gather from what Carolyn reports that Hollywood now produces false entertainment: unmitigated violence on the screen; snickering, laughter in the audience.John Cage / quote ↗
21c. 1938 ADCombine nursing homes with nursery schools. Bring very old and very young together: they interest one another.John Cage / quote ↗
24c. 1938 ADSleep's what we need. It produces an emptiness in us into which sooner or later energies flow.John Cage / quote ↗
