Translated material
John Cage
“I cannot understand why people are afraid of new ideas. I'm afraid of the old ones, ”John Cage loved to say. The quintessence of his most valuable ideas is in the new issue of the “Oil” section: lessons of awareness, strengthening sensual pleasure, as well as overcoming boredom, sympathy and antipathies.
About sound and music:
“When I listen to what is customary to call music, it seems to me that someone says-he talks about his thoughts, feelings, experiences. But when I listen to the sounds of the street, I do not have the feeling that someone was saying. I just hear the sound in action: it becomes quieter or louder; either lower, then higher; It is shorter, then longer - he makes all those things that completely suit me. I do not need the sound to speak to me. "
About good and bad sounds:
“Some people created an idea of which sounds are good and which are bad. And they do not want to hear bad sounds. I had a friend-composer who could not stand the sounds of the street and was forced to plug ears with cotton to fence off from them. Today, many people walk the streets or drive in the headphones in the headwaters, so they do not hear the world around them. They only hear the music that they preferred to hear. I do not understand why they deprive themselves of this rich experience, which is also completely free. I believe that it is in it - the beginning of music, and the end of music may well be in musical collections. ”
About silence:
“ Silence for me is not at all the absence of any sounds, but all that is called the sounds of the environment. In truth, I give preference to sounds to music. When you listen to Beethoven or Mozart, you find that they are always the same. But when you listen to the sounds of the street, they are different every time.There is a story about the African prince who came to London, and for him they played a whole program of orchestral music. At the end of the performance, he asked: “Why did you play the same composition again and again?” This never happens on the sixth Avenue, where I live. Perhaps this is because I am listening as if I had never heard her before. ”
About awareness and attention:
“ I think to live is to pay attention. Therefore, I propose an approach that can be called a tourist worldview: to behave as if you had never been here before. After all, if you think about it, we have never been anywhere before. Everyday life is much more interesting than festive dates (unless we live consciously), because this is the time when we have no expectations. And then suddenly we find that the world is magical. ”
About the serene mind:
“ I wanted to learn how to maintain serenity in a restless environment. And Zen Buddhism taught me that a serene mind is a mind free from sympathy and antipathies. You can have a narrow mind, loving some things and not loving others. And you can have an open mind by abandoning sympathy and antipathies and showing interest in everything. ”
About the purpose of art:
“ When something seems ugly to me, I first ask myself: why do I think it's ugly? And very soon I find that there is no reason. If we manage to overcome this hostility and love what we did not like before, the world becomes richer. We should all accept this path - the way to increase the pleasure of the world, and use art not as a way of self -expression, but as a way to become more open. ”
About Schounberg:
“ I never had a sense of harmony, and Shenberg believed that this would not allow me to write music. He said: "You will bury into the wall and you will not be able to move on." I replied: "Well, then I will beat my head against this wall." I literally began to hit objects against each other and took up percussion. ”
About new materials:
“ I am sorry that I spent most of my musical life in search of new materials. It seems to me that the significance of new materials lies in the fact that they personify in our culture an irresistible desire to explore the unknown. This desire is ignited by our hearts until we know the unknown earlier; Then it fades, but only in order to ignite again at the thought of the new unknown. This desire found expression in new materials, because our culture does not believe in the peaceful center of being, but in the constant projection of our desire for integrity to objects of the world. ”
About the development of art:
“We inherited our idea of art from previous generations. But now our perception should be enriched not by deliverance from the old - after all, the new one never takes the place of the old; Instead, we must open a new application for art and all that we did not consider art before. Whether we want it or not, but in the twentieth century the border between art and life is more and more blurred. ”
About contemporary art:
“ Painting can be considered modern if it is not disturbed by environmental intervention - say, the presence of shadows or stains on the canvas. The same applies to music: if the composition is able to integrate the sounds of the environment - this is a modern work. If, as is the case with the composition of Beethoven, the crying of a child or cough of the viewer interrupts music, we understand that this is not modern art. I think that at the moment its interaction with the environment can serve as a good criterion for the value of the work of art: how much it is violated or in harmony with it. ”
About the vanguard:
“ People always hoped that once the vanguard would end, but the trouble is that this would never happen. And the reason for this is that the avant -garde is inextricably linked with such vital phenomena as ingenuity and innovation. So the avant -garde will always be here to act people on the nerves. ”
About emotions:
“ Emotions are characteristic of every person, but they have no place in my work. Any positive emotions can turn into negative ones. Most murders are committed by people who love each other. Love, as you know, blinds people. Emotions have always been considered dangerous. That is why it is necessary to free yourself from your sympathy and antipathies. ”
About the case and improvisation:
“ The use of a case is a discipline, while improvisation is not. Improvisation, as a rule, means the execution of what you know what you like or what you feel; However, these are exactly those things from which Zen calls us to free ourselves. The fact is that the source for improvisation often serves not what you are going to do, but taste and memory. She leads not to the new, but to what you are already familiar with. ”
About understanding and clarity:
“ I am a supporter of things to maintain mystery. If I understand something, it becomes useless for me. Therefore, I try to make music that I do not understand, and which will be difficult to understand other people. I prefer that art remains mysterious. I found that if a book, picture or musical composition is incomprehensible to me, I can find application of my abilities. If I understand the work, then I can put it on the shelf and forget about it. ”
About boredom:
“ Zen teaches: if something seems boring to you after two minutes, try to do it for four minutes. If still bored, try eight. Then sixteen, thirty -two and so on. In the end, you find that this is not boring at all, but very interesting. ”
About spiritual practice:
“ The most affordable practice is the orientation of the mind by several things at the same time. I consider this a more effective method than sitting with crossed legs. In my opinion, the meaning of meditation is to open the doors of the ego, to distract it from the concentration on itself and to open its stream of the universe. And we can achieve the same goal through sensory perception, by increasing the number of things that we can realize at the same time. At least I believe in it. ”
About Daisetsu Suzuki:
“ Suzuki was very taciturn. Only occasionally-perhaps once a week-he said something that was clearly and clear. For the most part, nothing of what he said during the day was postponed in his memory. Once he said: "It is obvious that in the world there is a general tendency to good." Are you not wonderful words? He never explained what this means, but we did not ask. ”