I feel that we can all learn something from Cage. “Searching for Silence,” a New Yorker article details the life and legacy of John Cage, a musical artist. I refer to him as a musical artist rather than a musician because in accordance with today’s standards, a musician insinuates a melody or a time signature at the least, and a melody insinuates a set of notes that follow music theory as does a time signature. Cage’s artwork was known for neither of those.
The pieces Cage wrote and performed focused on both how every noise is valuable and how often we have found ourselves biased towards music. He would set out to perform a piece and the audience, expecting music in the classical sense, would await a set of notes only to be met with the sound of radio static, birds, or even a duck whistle blown into water.
One of Cage’s most profound legacies was a piece titled “4:33” in which he allotted four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence to occur. The audience, once again expecting music (in a classical sense) to be played would be met with absolutely no noise at all- well, from the artist at least. The piece was played by the world surrounding them. The noise of a cleared throat, a person standing up, a pamphlet being flipped, the buzz of electricity ahead; all of it was declared music in accordance with the piece. Every noise suddenly had the same value as the notes of a piano or the sound of a violin being played. Silence was not silence at all, but rather an opportunity to hear all that we deafen.
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