Showing posts with label John Cage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Cage. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

indeterminacy





Indeterminacy means, literally: not fixed, not settled, uncertain, indefinite.
 It means that you don't know where you are. 
How can it be otherwise, say the Buddhist teachings, 
since you have no fixed or inherent identity 
and are ceaselessly in process?
 
Life is filled with uncertainty.  Chance events happen to all of us. 
Each of us must take responsibility and make decisions. 
None of us should be imposing our ego image on others.

There's another way to live.
 Accept indeterminacy as a principle,
 and you see your life in a new light,
 as a series of seemingly unrelated jewel-like stories 
within a dazzling setting of change and transformation.
 
 Recognize that you don't know where you stand,
 and you will begin to watch where you put your feet.
 That's when the path appears.




~ John Cage
from Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, 
Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists
by Kay Larson

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Friday, May 14, 2010

The piece is not actually silent


.
.
The piece is not actually silent 
[there will never be silence until death comes which never comes];
 it is full of sound,
 but sounds which I do not think of beforehand, 
which I hear for the first time the same time others hear. 
What we hear is determined by our own emptiness, 
our own receptivity; 
we receive to the extent we are empty to do so.
 If one is full, 
or in the course of its performance becomes full of an idea[...], then it is just that.
.

~ John Cage, responding to a detractor of 4'33", recalled by Christian Wolff
.
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