Friday, September 12, 2008

John Cage

Today is not the day of thefree giveaway. It will be soon!

Rules for Students and Teachers." Here they are:


1 Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

2 General duties of a student--pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

3 General duties of a teacher--pull everything out of your students.

4 Consider everything an experiment.

5 Be self-disciplined--this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

6 Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make.

7 The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

8 Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.

9 Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.

10 Break rules. Even your own rules. Leave plenty of room for X quantities.


John Cage (1912-1992) was a composer, print maker, performance artist, writer, philosopher, editor, teacher, mushroom expert, collaborator and poet. Fact is, John Cage had a lot of fun . Considered one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century, he produced works with one note, no notes, notes by chance, and a noted organ composition that takes 639 years to play.

Thinking about the life and "happenings" of John Cage, it's not difficult to see that joy, imagination and brilliance flow from work.

No comments: