"John Cage’s music actually seems to me to be the closest and most intimate music that could ever exist. When I was in college and really depressed because I was making uninspired music, I threw a CD of Cage’s toy piano music into my stereo. And when I listened to it, I was in a place where beautiful melodies just happened over and over— they were just lines that weren’t forcing me to do anything. They weren’t forming phrases leading to some dramatic peak, and then sliding down into a self-satisfied and dignified completion, like a simple sonata form or a boring SAT essay. They weren’t telling me anything. They were just there. And they happened to sound beautiful to me. Suddenly, I was free."
— Julia Holter on John Cage— check out more anecdotes from a wide variety of artists talking about the revolutionary composer and thinker in Grayson Currin’s feature, “Lectures on Nothing: John Cage’s Century”.
