We’ve never read a more perfect description of foraging for wild mushrooms or for ideas than this from John Cage. It’s from the sublime John Cage: A Mycological Foray.
Read MoreWe Played with John Cage’s 12 Words and Blasted Open Our Heads
Artist, composer John Cage was also a remarkably powerful writer. Over years of reading him we’ve found ourself transformed by even a sentence or two. This one landed in a similar way……We found that shifting the flow of words ever-so-slightly had a surprising effect.
Read MoreVarieties of YES: A Zen View, John Cage, Mary Oliver, James Joyce and the Katz’s Deli Orgasm
Thirty + years ago, the world witnessed Meg Ryan’s perfection of a faked orgasm in Katz’s Deli, we’ve been thinking about great, transformative yeses we’ve written about or experienced.
Read MoreAll You Have to Do (John Cage with Fast Forward)
These remarkable words by John Cage made us think of two teeny videos made by his friend Fast Forward that expand them…
Read More10 Enduring Rules for the Creative Life (Sister Corita Kent + John Cage)
This remarkable set of 10 “rules” for creative living and working taught by Sister Corita Kent and John Cage have guided artists for over 50 years.
Read MoreJohn Cage’s Clarifying Question About Good and Bad Taste
John Cage’s question of taste is curiously liberating. It helps to gently soften our rote opinions and view of ‘ugly’, making us see more possibilities.
Read MoreLaurie Anderson and John Cage’s Wonderful Conversation Long Ago (Two Heroes!)
A digital walkabout took us a 1992 edition of Tricycle, the great Buddhist magazine, where Laurie Anderson interviews Cage, then 80 years old. Here are some catalytic bits:
Read MoreA Practice of Letting Go of Obsessive Thoughts You Can Do Anywhere (John Cage + Huang Po)
There are twenty-one post-it notes in my copy of Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists: each an illuminating and useful tool. Here is a favorite.
Read MoreEmbracing the Walls Within (John Cage)
In our dog-eared A Year From Monday, we read this astonishing story from John Cage, in Lecture on Commitment. As usual, it changed our view completely.
Read MoreArt as Self-Alteration, Rather than Self Expression (John Cage)
John Cage used chance as the key determinant in his art. Rather than impose his will and self-expression, he preferred “self-alteration”, which is a unique approach to life as well.
Read MoreGive Up Judgments, Substitute Poetry (John Cage + Rilke)
We read this astonishing line in John Cage’s ever-illuminating A Year From Monday. SUCH a good idea. We are starting our week giving up judgments….for….this……
Read MoreJohn Cage’s Transformative “Question of Taste”
You can open John Cage’s A Year from Monday anywhere and find a snippet that will turn your head around. Like this clarifying view of TASTE, and the opinions about style that are so much a part of modern life:
Read MoreJohn Cage: Saying YES to Unpredictability
We opened the John Cage’s enduringly great A Year from Monday and found this extraordinary set of questions*: How immediately are you going to say Yes to no matter what unpredictability, even when what happens seems to have no relation to what one thought was one’s commitment? The kind of YES he’s talking about is full committment:
Read Morehappy birthday john cage!
Wednesday would have been the late avant-garde composer John Cage‘s 100 birthday, and he’s had SUCH an big influence in our lives, we wanted to commemorate the day. To describe his work is practically impossible, since it broke down definitions of “music” like crazy and was really performance of endlessly varied kinds – involving chance…
Read Morebathroom read: john cage’s “a year from monday”
John Cage’s A Year from Monday is part of our Essential Bathroom Library; you can open the book anywhere and find a short concentrated bit to shake your head up. As one reviewer wrote: “Cage’s writing does not tell us what to think as much as it makes us think in a particular way…” We find…
Read Morejohn cage applying ‘what would happen’ if to music
There’s a beautiful piece by Alex Ross in this week’s New Yorker this week about avant garde artist John Cage, who had a profound influence on our understanding of what music can be. Here’s a chunk that knocked us out: “One a simpler level, Cage had an itch to try new things. What would happen…
Read MoreRocks and Stones Make Endlessly Useful Tools and Beautiful Objets
A personal compendium of the pleasures and uses for rocks and stones, with John Cage and Mary Oliver…
Read MoreJoy Right Now Where You Don’t Expect It
Although we’re not religious, we’ve loved being able to wander into an empty church when we find one open, for a few minutes of quiet and the particular kind of stillness they hold. Recently missing that possibility, we’ve been discovering other ways to get the feeling of respite our random visits once provided.
Read MoreRocks are Useful and Sparkle with Poetry and Art
Knowing how a long lineage of artists and writers have used rocks and stones in their work expands my pleasure in those I collect for their beauty and endless uses…
Read MorePat Steir: How to Occupy This Time on Earth
Pat Steir is one of our favorite artists for the dazzling beauty and surprise of her work. She speaks eloquently about the dark time we find ourselves in.
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