Cage is not God --He is a Bhodisattva. The "dip in" quality of the book---Isn't that what he was all about? Pick a place and begin! I remember people dissing Cage back in the day as silly. --pointing out 4'33" as the ultimate in lazy art, but as I've matured I have come to love his works and his thinking. I was at the Portland Art museum just yesterday and they had a book of his prints in the gift shop --His visual art is as profound as his composition. Thanks for the quote, Rick! From: mark@markfrancombe.com Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 10:10:41 +0100 Subject: Re: OT Now We Will Hear Freedom To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com I was going to say "Silence" : I LOVE this book, I actually carry it with me WHEREVER I go! That and "A Humament" By Tom Philips. They are my random pack.. Unfortunately Silence is looking very raggedy now, it being softback. I have never read the whole book, and on the whole I hate "dip in" books, you know, books that are filled with cool er... sig files, but not much content. Silence is like that however, (I hate for example that someone at my work has bought some posters that are pictures of Andy Warhol (done in an Andy Warhol Style of course) and covered in Andy Warhol quotes. But Cages book works, its not just some marketing, buzz word thing. Its more like a Zen thing, big things said in short, almost meaningless ways. I stole the book from my Art college about 25 years ago, mainly for the typographic layout, the way that the "lectures on nothing" are divided into 4 columns makes it possible for you to read verticaly as well as horizontally for a different meaning. Cage was so inspiring to me as a child (ok teenager) , the quote originally quoted by Rick is exactly the sort of thing that stood out to me, as a short, almost aggressive daring thing to say, and as a young and daring teenager, exited me to think that we were living in this exact period when the rules of music were finally (after hundreds of years) falling down, and that Cage suggesting that silence was music, meant that, THAT was where we could all start again, from silence, and build up music again from nothing.. not from some arbitrary rules from the previous century. I think Art was going through the same revolution at the same time (60's) but doesnt seem to have fared so well, we STILL see blank canvasses, and grand ideas, in sterile galleries, by big, famous has-beens, and the Art World is even harder to break into as a new, unconnected young artist Cage is God Shhhhh... Mark On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 4:04 AM, Jeff Duke <jeffloops@gmail.com> wrote: Good ol' Google. -- mark francombe www.markfrancombe.com www.ordoabkhao.com twitter @markfrancombe http://vimeo.com/user825094 http://www.looop.no |