Carolina QuotesI have nothing to say/ and I am saying it/ and that is poetry/ as I need it.
John Cage Connected to the Carolinas
Source
"Lecture on Nothing" (1949)
- year
- 1949
Cite this record
“I have nothing to say/ and I am saying it/ and that is poetr…” John Cage. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-42496A16CB. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/42496a16cb
More from John Cage
So it was that I gave about 1949 my 'Lecture on Nothing' at the Artists' Club on Eighth Street in New York City (started by Robert Motherwell), which predated the popular one associated with Philip Pavia, Bill de Kooning, et al. ). This 'Lecture on Nothing' was written in the same rhythmic structure I employed at the time in my musical compositions (Sonatas and Interludes, Three Dances, etc.) . One of the structural divisions was the repetition, some fourteen times, of a single page in which occurred the refrain, 'If anyone is sleepy let him go to sleep.' Jeanne Reynal, I remember, stood up part way through, screamed, and then said, while I continued speaking, 'John, I dearly love you, but I can't bear another minute.' She then walked out. Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen.
I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.
There is one term of the problem which you are not taking into account: precisely, the world. The real. You say: the real, the world as it is. But it is not, it becomes! It moves, it changes! It doesn’t wait for us to change.. .It is more mobile than you can imagine. You are getting closer to this reality when you say as it 'presents itself'; that means that it is not there, existing as an object. The world, the real is not an object. It is a process.