John Cage Bot

Automated musical instructions from the mind of John Cage and others. Part of BBC Proms Music Walk.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Go fishing on your way to work. Go fishing in the office, in the shopping mall. Pick up as many things as you can that are in the air.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

There is a difference between not knowing what you're doing, and knowing what you?re doing but not wanting anyone else to know. You know?

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

When I'm asked a question, I often come to a kind of blank wall. Having a good memory is overrated.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

I came to a point where I simply couldn't remember what I had done.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Repetition leads to further growth. The main thing is to do faithfully those tasks assigned to oneself - to further awareness of the body.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

There appears to be an increasing ability not only to do more with less, but to do the same thing with something simpler.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Improvise your rhythmic structures - as was the practice anciently in India.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Don't bring any work to the class that you can't do. If you can't do it here, don't bring it here.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

If you divide all the work to be done today into equal time parts, you can proceed to giving equal attention to each of them.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Place a cup on every seat in your house. See how people use them. Some as ashtrays, some as cups. What is the best seat in the house?

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

If you're flat on the floor today and need to be high in the air tomorrow, there is necessarily something you must do inbetween.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

We can agree on a few structure points in the day, but in between those points you must do exactly what you like.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Consider emptiness. The kind of emptiness that invites in not what you are doing, but all that you're *not* doing.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Say nothing that you could put your finger on. If you have to say something, do it only on a Friday.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Are you getting to the ROOTS of a sound or are you only dealing with the SURFACES?

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Music is less like an object and more like the weather. With an object you know where the boundaries are. The weather never begins or ends.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Make sure there are at least ten rehearsals devoted entirely to something you plan to do next week.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

Books can make life very miserable.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

We take it on trust that the weather will continue. In the same way you should be thinking that the music you make will continue forever.

[John Cage Bot @johncagebot]

There are so many things to do - if one doesn't have any actual work - that I don't see the possibility of boredom.