[[There is nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it|Start]].
As we go along, (who knows?) an [[idea]] may occur in this talk. I have no idea whether one will or not. If it does, let it.\nRegard it as something seen momentarily, as though from a window while [[traveling]].
It is and it isn't. But one thing is certain. If one is making something which is to be nothing, the one making must [[love]] and be patient with the material he chooses. Otherwise he calls attention to the material, which is preciesly [[something]], whereas it was [[nothing]] that was being made; or he calls attention to himself, whereas nothing is anonymous.\nThe technique of handling materials is, on the sense level what structure as a discipline is on the rational level: [[a means of experiencing nothing]].
"Read me that part again [[where I disinherit everybody]]."
Most anybody knows about the [[future|time]] and how [[uncertain|Start]] it is.
As I keep on remembering, I see that I never really liked the thirds, and this explains why I never really liked [[Brahms|material]].
I used [[noises]].\nThey had not been intellectualized; the [[ear]] could hear them directly and didn't have to go through any [[abstraction|mind]] about them.
There were so many intervals in modern music that fascinated me rather than that I loved it, and being fascinated by it I decided to write it. [[Writing it at first is difficult: that is, putting the mind on it takes the ear off it|Simpler]].\nHowever, doing it [[alone]], I was free to haer that a high sound is different from a a low sounds even when both are called by the same letter.
It is like an empty glass, [[nothing|silences and the words make help make the silences]] but wheat, or is it corn? Does it matter which? Kansas has this about it: at any instant, [[one may leave it, and whenever one wishes one may return to it|Start]].\nOr you may leave it forever and never return to it, for we possess nothing.
Lecture on Nothing
[[Here we are now, a litte bit after the beginning of the eleventh unit of the fourth large part of this talk.]]. More and more we have the feeling that [[I am getting nowhere|we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, slowly, we have the feeling we are getting nowhere. That is a [[pleasure]] which will continue.
Continuity today, when it is necesarry, is a demonstration of disinterestedness. That is, it is a proof that our delight lies in [[not possessing anything|poetry]]. Each moment [[presents what happens|fear]].
The other day a pupil said, after trying to [[compose|Simpler]] a [[melody]] using only three [[tones]], [["I felt limited."|limitations]]\nHad she concerned herself with the three tones –her materials– she would not have felt limited, and since materials are without feeling, there would not have been any limitation. It was all in her mind, whereas it belonged in the materials.\nIt became [[something]] by not being [[nothing]]; it would have been [[nothing]] by being [[something]].
Would you like to join a society called [[Capitalists Inc.]]? (Just so no one would thinkg we were Communists.) Anyone joining automatically becomes president.\nTo join you must show you've destroyed at least one hundred records or, in the case of tape, one sound mirror.
Now about material: [[is it interesting?]]
Give any tought a push: it falls down easily; but the pusher and the pushed produce that entertainment called a discussion.\n[[Shall we have one later?|ear]] Or [[we could simply decide not to have a discussion]]. [[What ever you like]].
This second part is about [[structure]]: how [[simple]] it is, what it is and why we should be willing to accept its [[limitations]].
Now begins the third unit of the second part.\nNow the second part of that third unit.\nNow its third part.\nNow its fourth part (which, by the way, is just the same lenght as the third part).\nNow the fifth and [[last]] part.
But in order to have them, the mind had fixed it so that one had to [[avoid|fourth]] having progressions that would make on think of sounds that were not actually present to the [[ear]].
If there are no questions, there are no answers.\n[[If there are questions, then, of course, there are answers]], but the final answer makes the questions seem absurd, whereas the questions, up until then, seem more intelligent than the answers.
I heard them because I accepted the [[limitations]] of an arts conference in a Virginia girls' finishing school, whichi limitations allowed me quite by accident to hear the blackbirds as they flew up overhead.\nThere was a [[social calendar and hours for breakfast|simple]], but one day I saw a cardinal, and the same day heard a woodpecker.\nI also met America's youngest college president. However, she has resigned, and people say she is going into politics. Let her. Why shouldn't she?\nI also had the pleasure of hearing an eminent music critic exclaim that he hoped he would live long enough to see the end of this craze for Bach.
Most speeches are full of ideas. [[This one doesn't have to have any|silence]]. But at any moment an idea may come along. [[Then we may enjoy it|nothing]].
[[Here we are now at the beginning of the thirteenth of the fourth large part of this talk]]. More and more I have the feeling that [[we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere and that is a [[pleasure]]. It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
If across Kansas, then, of course, [[Kansas]]. Arizona is more interesting, almost too interesting, especially for a New Yorker who is being interested in spite of himself in everything. Now he knows he needs the Kansas in him. Kansas is like nothing on earth, and for a New Yorker very [[refreshing|Start]].
A five-finger exercise for one hand was full of beauty. Later on I gradually liked all the intervals.\nAs I look back I realize I began liking the octave; I accepted the major and minor thirds. Perhaps, of all the intervals, I liked these thirds least. Through the music of Grieg, I became passionately fond of the [[fifth]].
Pure life expresses itself within and through structure. Each moment is absolute, alive and significant. [[Blackbirds]] rise from a field [[making sound delicious beyond compare|love]].
(Last year when I talked here I made a short [[talk]]. That was because I was talking about [[something]]; but this year I am talking about [[nothing]] and of course will go on talking for a long [[time]].)
To imagine you own [[any piece of music|stand]] is to miss [[the whole point]].
It is the [[continuity]] of a piece of [[music]].
[[Here we are now at the beginning of the fifth unit of the fourth large part of this talk]]. More and more I have the feeling that [[we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere and that is a [[pleasure]]. It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
The [[twelve-tone row]] is a method; a method is a control of each single [[note|If there are questions, then, of course, there are answers]]. There is [[too much]] there there.
[[Here we are now at the beginning of the eleventh of the fourth large part of this talk]]. More and more I have the feeling that [[we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere and that is a [[pleasure]]. It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
That music is simple to make comes from one's willingness to accept the limitations of [[structure]]. Structure is simple because it can be thought out, figured out, measured.\nIt is a discipline which, accepted, in return accepts whatever, even those rare moments of ecstasy, which, as sugar loaves train horses, train us to make what we make.
Structure without life is dead. But [[Life]] without structure is unseen.
Studying with a teacher, I learned that the intervals have meaning; they are not just sounds but they imply in their progressions [[a sound not actually present to the ear|tonality]].
[[Unless|somewhere]] some other [[idea]] crops up about it [[that is all I have to say about structure|material]].
[[After several years of working alone, I began to feel lonely|seconds]].
Everybody has a song which is no song at all: it is a process of singing, and when you sing, [[you are where you are|sit]].
You have just experienced the [[structure]] of this talk from a microcosmic point of view.\nFrom a macrocosmic point of view we are just passing the halfway point in the second large part. The first part was a rather rambling discussion of [[nothing]], of [[form]], and [[continuity]] when it is the way we [[now]] need it.
This space of [[time]] is [[organized]]. We need not fear these [[silences|silence]], we may love them.
[[Here we are now at the beginning of the ninth of the fourth large part of this talk]]. More and more I have the feeling that [[we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere and that is a [[pleasure]]. It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
What I admired in Bach was [[the way many things went together|nowhere]].
The idea is this: progress in such a way as to imply the presence of a tone not actually present; then fool everyone by not landing on it–land somewhere else.\nWhat is being fooled? Not the [[ear]] but the [[mind]].\nThe whole [[question]] is very [[intellectual]].
[[Here we are now at the beginning of the third unit of the fourth large parte of this talk]]. More and more I have the feeling that [[we are getting nowhere]] and that is a [[pleasure]]. It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
A lady from Texas said: [[I live in Texas. We have no music in Texas]].\nThe reason they've no music in Texas is because the have [[recordings|the need to possess]] in Texas.
Original text by John Cage\nRemixed by Jorge Rangel\n\nVersión 0.9
[[Here we are now at the middle of the fourth large part of this talk]]. More and more I have the feeling that [[we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere and that is a [[pleasure]]. It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
And it seems to me I could listen forever to Japanese shakuhachi music or the Navajo Yeibitchai. Or I could [[sit]] or [[stand]] near Richard Lippold's //Full Moon// and lenght of [[time]].\nChinese bronzes, how I love them.\nBut those beauties which others have made, tend to stir up [[the need to possess]] and I know [[I possess nothing|poetry]].
I remember loving sound before I ever took a [[music lesson|melody]]. And so we make our [[lives|recapitulation]] by what we love.
A pupil once said to me: I understand what you say about Beethoven and I think I agree but I have a very serious question to ask you: How do you feel about [[Bach]]?\n[[Now|I just stand]] we have come to the [[end]] of the part about [[structure|now]].
I have nothing against the twelve-tone row; but it is a method, not a [[structure]]. We really do need a structure, so we can see we are [[nowhere]].\nMuch of the [[music]] I love uses the twelve-tone row, but that is not why I [[love]] it.\nI love it for no reason.\nI love it for [[suddenly I am nowhere]].\n(My own music does that quickly for me.)
However modern music still fascinated me [[with all its modern intervals|time]].
At this particular moment we are passing through the fourth part of a unit which is the second unit in the second large part of this talk. It is a little bit like passing through [[Kansas]].\nThis is now [[the end of the second unit]].
I am here, and there is [[nothing]] to say.\nIf among you are those who wish to get somewhere, [[let them leave at any moment]].\nWhat we require is [[silence]]; but what silence requires is that [[I go on talking]].
Somebody asked Debussy how he wrote music. He said: I take [[all the tones there are|where I disinherit everybody]], leave out the ones I don't want, and [[use all the others|ear]].\nSatie said: When I was young, people told me: You'll see when you're fifty years old. Now I'm fifty. I've seen [[nothing]].
Modern music fascinated me with all its modern intervals: the [[sevenths]], the [[seconds]], the [[tritone]], and the [[fourth]]and always, every now and then, there was a [[fifth]], and that pleased me.\nSometimes there were single tones, not intervals at all, and that was a [[delight|somewhere]].
.passage {\n\tfont-family: Georgia;\n\tfont-size: 2em;\n}\n\n.title {\n\tdisplay: none;\n}
[[Originally we were nowhere|If you think you are a ghost you will become a ghost.]]; and now, again, we are having the [[pleasure]] of being slowly nowhere. If anybody is sleepy, [[let him go to sleep|let them leave at any moment]].
Hearing or making this music is not [[different|form]] –only simpler– than living this way. [[Simpler]], that is, for me, because it happens that I write music.
How different this form sense is from that which is bound up in memory: [[themes|silence]] and [[secondary themes|time]]; their [[struggle|fear]]; their [[development|What ever you like]]; the [[climax|organized]]; the [[recapitulation]] (which is the belief that one may own one's own home).
"[[If you think you are a ghost you will become a ghost.]]"\nThinking the sounds worn out wore them out. So you see: this question brings us back where we were: nowhere, or, if you like, [[where we are|ear]].
If they were feet, would it be a two-tone row? Or can we [[fly|recapitulation]] from here to where?
That is finished now. It was a [[pleasure]]. And now [[this is a pleasure]].
But quiet sounds were like loneliness, or love or friendship.\nPermanent, I thought, values, independent at least from Life, Time and Coca-Cola.\nI must say I still feel this way, but something else is happening: I begin to hear the old sounds –the ones I had thought worn out, worn out by intellectualization– I begin to hear the old sounds as though they are not worn out.\nObviously they are not worn out. [[They are just as audible as the new sounds|ear]]. Thinking had worn them out. [[And if one stops thinking about them suddenly they are fresh and new|mind]].
This made me not only contemporary, but [["avant–garde"|fifth]].
I have a story:\n"There was once a man standing on a high elevation. A company of several men who happened to be walking on the road noticed from the distance the man standing on the high place and talked among themselves about this man. \nOne of them said: He must have lost his favorite animal.\nAnother man said: No, it must be his friend whom he is looking for.\nA third one said: He is just enjoying the cool air up there.\nThe three could not agree and the discussion ([[Shall we have one later?|I go on talking]]) went on until they reached the high place where the man was.\nOne of the three asked: O, friend standing up there, have you not lost your pet animal?\nNo, sir, I have not lost any.\nThe second man asked: Have you not lost your friend?\nNo, sir, I have not lost my friend either.\nThe third man asked: Are you not enjoying the fresh breeze up there?\nNo, sir, I am not.\nWhat, then, are you standing up there for, if you say no to all our questions?\nThe man on high said: [[I just stand]]."
[[Here we are now, a litte bit after the beginning of the ninth unit of the fourth large part of this talk.]]. More and more we have the feeling that [[I am getting nowhere|we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, slowly, we have the feeling we are getting nowhere. That is a [[pleasure]] which will continue.
I thought there where [[eighty-eight tones]].\nYou can quarter them too.
Tonality. I never liked tonality.\nI worked at it. Studied it. But I never had any feeling for it: for instance: there are some progressions called [[deceptive cadences|tritone]].
[[Here we are now, a litte bit after the beginning of the third unit of the fourth large part of this talk]]. More and more we have the feeling that [[I am getting nowhere|we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, slowly, and we have the feeling [[we are getting nowhere]]. That is a [[pleasure]] which will continue.
There is no point or the point is nothing; and even a long playing record is a thing.
This is a composed talk, for I am making it just as I make a piece of [[music]]. It is like a glass of milk. [[We need the glass and we need the milk|Simpler]]. [[Or again it is like an empty class into which at any moment anything may be poured|Start]].
Should one use the materials characteristic of one's time?\nNow there's a question that ought to get us [[somewhere]]. It is an intellectual [[question]]. I shall [[answer]] it slowly and autobiographically.
[[Here we are now, a litte bit after the beginning of the thirteenth unit of the fourth large part of this talk.]]. More and more we have the feeling that [[I am getting nowhere|we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, slowly, we have the feeling we are getting nowhere. That is a [[pleasure]] which will continue.
Remove the records from Texas and someone will learn to [[sing]].
However, it occurs to me to say more about [[structure]]. Specifically this: We are now at the beginning of the third part and that part is not the part devoted to structure. It's the part about [[material]]. But I'm still talking about structure. It must be clear from that that structure has no point, and, as we have seen, [[form]] has no point either. Clearly we are beginning to get [[nowhere]].
I found that I liked noises even more than I liked intervals. I liked noises just as much as I had liked single sounds.\nNoises, too, had been discriminated against; and being American, having been trained to be sentimental, I fought for noises. I liked being on the side of the underdog.\nI got police permission to play sirens.\nThe most amazing noise I ever found was that produced by means of coild of wire attached to the pickup arm of a phonograph and then amplified. It was shocking, really shocking, and thunderous.\n[[Half intellectually and half sentimentally, when the war came along, I decided to use only quiet sounds. There seemed to me to be no truth, no good, in anything big in society|quiet sounds]].
Our [[poetry]] now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not possess it) and thus need not [[fear]] its loss. What I am calling poetry is often called [[content]]. I myself have called it [[form]].
There is not enough of [[nothing]] on it. A [[structure]] is like a bridge from [[nowhere]] to [[nowhere]] and anymone may go on it: [[noises]] or [[tones]], [[corn or wheat|Kansas]]. Does it matter which?
[[Here we are now, a litte bit after the beginning of the fifth unit of the fourth large part of this talk.]]. More and more we have the feeling that [[I am getting nowhere|we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, slowly, we have the feeling we are getting nowhere. That is a [[pleasure]] which will continue.
Avoiding did not appeal to me. I began to se that te separation of [[mind]] and [[ear]] had spoiled the sounds, [[that a clean slate was necessary|sevenths]].
I remember as a child [[loving|love]] all the sounds, even the unprepared ones. [[I liked them especially when there was one at a time|melody]].
[[Here we are now, a litte bit after the middle of the fourth large part of this talk.]]. More and more we have the feeling that [[I am getting nowhere|we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, slowly, we have the feeling we are getting nowhere. That is a [[pleasure]] which will continue.
[[Record collections, that is not music|Capitalists Inc.]].\nThe phonograph is a thing, not a musical instrument. [[A thing leads to other things]], whereas a musical instrument leads to [[nothing|the whole point]].
Nothing [[more than nothing|something]] can be [[said|silence]].
[[How could I better tell what structure is than simply to tell about this, this talk which is contained within a space of time approximately forty minutes long?|nowhere]]\nThat forty minutes have been divided into [[five large parts]], and each unit is divided likewise. [[Subdivision involving a square root is the only possible subdivision which permits this micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure, which I find so acceptable and accepting|five large parts]].\n[[As you see, I can say anything.\nIt makes very little difference what I say or even how I say it.|we could simply decide not to have a discussion]]
But actually, unlike the snail, we carry our homes [[within us|Start]], which enables us to fly or to stay, to enjoy each.\nBut beware of that which is breathtakingly beautiful, for at any moment the telephone may ring or the airplane come down in a [[vacant lot|nothing]]. A piece of string or a sunset, possessing neither, each acts and the [[continuity]] happens.
All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know [[something|silences and the words make help make the silences]], but when I am working, it is quite clear that I know [[nothing|silences and the words make help make the silences]].
But now there are [[silences|silences and the words make help make the silences]] and the [[words|something]] make help make the [[silences|silences and the words make help make the silences]].
[[Here we are now, a little bit after the beginning of the fourth large part of this talk]]. More and more we have the feeling that [[I am getting nowhere|we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, slowly, we have the feeling we are getting nowhere. That is a [[pleasure]] which will continue.
We need not destroy the past: it is gone; [[at any moment, it might reappear and seem to be and be te present|simple]]. Would it be a repetition? [[Only if we thought we owned it|poetry]], but since we don't it is free [[and so are we|Life]].
[[Here we are now at the beginning of the fourth large part of this talk]]. More and more I have the feeling that [[we are getting nowhere]]. Slowly, as the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere and that is a [[pleasure]]. It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.
[[If we are irritated, it is not a pleasure. Nothing is not a pleasure if one is irritated, but suddenly, it is a pleasure, and then more and more it is not irritating (and then more and more and slowly).|If you think you are a ghost you will become a ghost.]]
Or perhaps you could call it puppy-dog [[love]], for the fifth did not make me want to [[write music|music]]: it made me want to devote my life to playing the works of Grieg.\n[[When later I heard modern music|somewhere]], I took, like a duck to water, to all the modern intervals: the [[sevenths]], the [[seconds]], the [[tritone]], and the [[fourth]].\nI liked [[Bach]] too about this time, but I didn't like the sound of the [[thirds]] and the [[sixths]].