Silence: Lectures and Writings

I read this years ago, the affecting musings of a "compleat" composer essayist on art and such joie de vivre topics as mushroom collecting. Three things particularly stay with me over the years :

1. his ordering that it's good to listen to music, better to play it, best to create it via composition. this urges me to someday become capable on some instrument and also create something, maybe my own book if not a tune

2. cage in a silencing anechoic chamber, an experiment I duplicated in a semi-anechoic chamber at General motors. there's no silence for the living. you hear 2 distinct and low volume tones: the high pitch of the nervous system and the low pitch of the circulatory system.

3. This sanguine philosophy: "The composer whose works show more 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.' show less

I do wonder what it might have felt like to have read these pieces at the time they were first published. Even though I did enjoy reading the book in general (and know that experiencing Cage's lectures in real life would have been far more engaging than reading their merely written recreations), every now and then, I got impatient with what felt like the schtickiness of Ram Dass' "Be Here Now"—which also probably would have come across differently had I read it at the time it was first published.

i once had a dream that i found a hardcover john cage book in a used bookstore, and the moment i picked it up, i felt a profound, beyond bone-deep sense that this was The One, The Book. it was one of the most comforting dreams i've ever woken from.

a year or so later, i found 'silence' in a pile of books i was sorting through at the used bookstore where i worked at the time, and i felt a little thrill...

not quite The One, but i'm holding onto it anyway.

If you're interested in contemporary art or experimental music, this book is a necessity. It's only a collection of essays, I often just open it up and read a random piece of writing. I have yet to be let down. It is both intrigueing and eye-opening.

To summarize: there is no such thing as silence; don't be afraid.