Johann Johannsson Quotes

Also, I liked John Cage's music. I liked it for its craziness, the use of silence, the boldness-anything to get me away from writing about.. I don't know what academic poets write about.

John Cage made you realise that there wasn't a thing called noise, it was just music you hadn't appreciated.

Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent.

Hear the birds? Sometimes I like to pretend that I'm deaf and I try to imagine what it's like not to be able to hear them. It's not that bad.

I'd always thought Cage's 'Root of an Unfocus' would be great in a movie.

The thinking of John Cage derived from Duchamp and Dada. I was not interested in that.

I am very emotionally affected by sound. Sounds are the inexplicable... There is a sound you hear in your head, it's your nerves, or your blood running.

We've been appropriating in art since Duchamp, and we've been appropriating in music since the first person was banging on drums.

The world is full of sounds. We just don't usually hear them as music.

We used to have endless discussions with journalists about that: 'Why are you calling it noise? It's not noise, it's music,' and make references to everybody from John Cage to whoever.

For a split second, Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect the dummy to hear her talking that quietly through a sheet of glass, when there were buses rumbling along behind her and all the racket of street full of shoppers. Then he reminded himself that dummies could not hear anyway.

For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible.

How can a deer tell when a leaf falls silent in the forest? She hears it breathing differently.

Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.

I saw a tree fall in the woods, and I didn't hear it.

I, who have never heard a sound, tell you there is no silence, and I, who have never seen a ray of light, tell you there is no darkness.

I'm especially interested in the music of John Cage... I would like to do some experimenting with the relationship between his freeform sound and free-form art.

Notice, notice; let noticing take the place of screaming.

I was part of the sort of avant guard tradition of John Cage and music concrete and pushing back the boundaries of avant garde classic pop rhythms. I think everyone brings something completely different to it.

A powerful enough metaphor grows its own truth.

My latest theory is that it's - well, I describe it as, like, being in an apartment with kind of thin walls. And in the apartment next door, they've got a radio tuned constantly on - tuned to a really cool radio station. It's on all the time. And you can just hear it coming through the wall all the time.

But it seems impossible to speak and yet say nothing, you think you have succeeded, but you always overlook something.

I don't feel any real animosity towards critics when they write negative things. I think some are more perceptive than others. Some are very knowledgeable about painting. But it isn't something I have any influence over, so there isn't any point in worrying about it.

Only when you understand people, they may understand you. So even though you do not say anything, if you understand people there is some communication.

The most important thing is presentation.