Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.
John CageRead
People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.
Interpretation
Art is a product of hard work rather than just inspiration.
John Cage highlights the misconception that artists are solely reliant on inspiration to create their work. He asserts that the practice and discipline involved in their art form take precedence over moments of inspiration, suggesting that dedication and effort are fundamental to artistic achievement.
In practice
A speaker at an art workshop discussing the importance of dedication over inspiration.
Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.
Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that donβt have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Donβt have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.
I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing.
Since childhood, I'd dreamed of making a film, but producers in France and Germany wanted to make commercial films with chinoiserie. I refused.
An artist's initial broad stroke is always most impactful, and obsessively adding layer upon layer of paint to fill in details often diminishes the painting's aura. When an aura is lost, it is impossible to get back.
The long path from material through function to creative work has only one goal: to create order out of the desperate confusion of our time.
Make something, a kind of object, which as it changes or falls apart (dies as it were) or increases in its parts (grows as it were) offers no clue as to what its state or form or nature was at any previous time. Physical and Metaphysical. Obstinacy. Could this be a useful object?
What was venerated as style was nothing more than an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.
Compose with utter freedom and edit with utter discipline.
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