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John 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:

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happy 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…

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bathroom 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…

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john 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…

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Joy 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.

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