Cage - Lecture On Nothing

This lecture was printed in Incontri Musicali, August 1959.
There are four

measures in each line and twelve lines in each unit of the rhythmic structure.
There are forty-eight such units, each having forty-eight measures. The
whole is divided into five large parts, in the proportion 7, 6, 14, 14, 7.
The forty-eight measures of each unit are likewise so divided. The text is
printed in four columns to facilitate a rhythmic reading. Each line is to be
read across the page from left to right, not down the columns in sequence.
This should not be done in an artificial manner (which might result from an
attempt to be too strictly faithful to the position of the words on the page), but
with the rubato which one uses in everyday speech.
LECTURE ON NOTHING
I am here and there is nothing to say

If among you are
those who wish to get somewhere let them leave at
any moment What we re-quire is
silence but what silence requires
is that I go on talking
Give anyone thought
a push it falls down easily
but the pusher and the pushed pro-duce that enter-
tainment called a dis-cussion
Shall we have one later ?
11l'
Or we could simply de-cide not to have a dis-
cussion What ever you like. But
now there are silences and the
words make help make the
silences
I have nothing to say
and I am saying it and that is
poetry as I need it
This space of time is organized

We need not fear these silences, -
11l'
LECTURE ON NOTHING/109
we may love them
This is a composed
talk for I am making it
just as I make a piece of music. It is like a glass
of milk We need the glass
and we need the milk Or again it is like an
empty glass into which at any
moment anything may be poured
As we go along (who knows?)
an i-dea may occur in this talk
I have no idea whether one will
or not. If one does, let it. Re-
TO'
gard it as something seen momentarily as
though from a window while traveling
If across Kansas then, of course, Kansas
Arizona is more interesting,
almost too interesting especially for a New-Yorker who is
being interested in spite of himself in everything. Now he knows he
needs the Kansas in him Kansas is like
nothing on earth and for a New Yorker very refreshing.
It is like an empty glass, nothing but wheat or
is it com ? Does it matter which ?
Kansas has this about it: at any instant, one may leave it,
and whenever one wishes one may return to it
TO'
Or you may leave it forever and never return to it
for we pos-sess nothing Our poetry now
is the reali-zation that we possess nothing
Anything therefore is a delight
(since we do not pos-sess it) and thus need not fear its loss
We need not destroy the past: it is gone;
at any moment, it might reappear and seem to be and be the present
Would it be a repetition? Only if we thought we
owned it, but since we don't, it is free and so are we
110/ SILENCE
Most anybody knows a-bout the future
and how un-certain it is
l'Q'
What I am calling poetry is often called content.
I myself have called it form It is the conti-
nuity of a piece of music. Continuity today,
when it is necessary is a demonstration of dis-
interestedness. That is, it is a proof that our delight
lies in not pos-sessing anything Each moment
presents what happens How different
this form sense is from that which is bound up with
memory: themes and secondary themes; their struggle;
their development; the climax; the recapitulation (which is the belief
that one may own one's own home) But actually,
unlike the snail we carry our homes within us,
l'Q'
which enables us to fly or to stay
to enjoy each. But beware of
that which is breathtakingly beautiful, for at any moment
the telephone may ring or the airplane
come down in a vacant lot A piece of string
or a sunset possessing neither
each acts and the continuity happens
Nothing more than nothing can be said.
Hearing or making this in music is not different
only simpler - than living this way
Simpler, that is for me, - because it happens
that I write music
l'Q' l'Q'
That music is simple to make comes from one's willingness to ac-

cept the limitations of structure. Structure is
simple be-cause it can be thought out, figured out,
measured It is a discipline which,
accepted, in return accepts whatever even those
rare moments of ecstasy, which, as sugar loaves train horses,
train us to make what we make How could I
better tell what structure is than simply to
tell about this, this talk which is
contained within a space of time approximately
forty minutes long ?
T1l'
That forty minutes has been divided into five large parts, and
each unit is divided likewise. Subdivision in-
volving a square root is the only possible subdivision which
permits this micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure
which I find so acceptable and accepting
As you see, I can say anything
It makes very little difference what I say or even how I say it.
At this par-ticular moment, we are passing through the fourth
part of a unit which is the second unit in the second large
part of this talk It is a little bit like passing through Kansas
This, now, is the end of that second unit
T1l'
Now begins the third unit of the second part
Now the
second part of that third unit
Now its third part
Now its fourth

part (which, by the way, is just the same
length as the third part)
Now the fifth and last part
T1l'
You have just ex-perienced the structure of this talk from a
microcosmic point of view From a macrocosmic
point of view we are just passing the halfway point in the second
large part. The first part was a rather rambling discussion of
nothing of form, and continuity
112/SIlENCE
when it is the way we now need it. This second
part is about structure: how simple it is
what it is and why we should be willing to
accept its limitations. Most speeches are full of
ideas. This one doesn't have to have any
But at any moment an idea may come along
Then we may enjoy it
11.1'
Structure without life is dead. But Life without
structure is un-seen Pure life
expresses itself within and through structure
Each moment is absolute, alive and sig-
nificant. Blackbirds rise from a field making a
sound de-licious be-yond com-pare
I heard them
because I ac-cepted the limitations of an arts
conference in a Virginia girls' finishing school, which limitations
allowed me quite by accident to hear the blackbirds
as they flew up and overhead There was a social
calendar and hours for breakfast but one day I saw a
11.1'
cardinal and the same day heard a woodpecker.
I also met America's youngest college president
However, she has resigned, and people say she is going into politics
Let her. Why shouldn't she? I also had the
pleasure of hearing an eminent music critic ex-claim
that he hoped he would live long e-nough to see the end
of this craze for Bach. A pupil once said to me: I
understand what you say about Beethoven and I think
I agree but I have a very serious question to
ask you: How do you feel about Bach
? Now we have come to the end of the
part about structure
11.1' 11.1'
However, it oc-curs to me to say more about structure
Specifically this: Weare
now at the be-ginning of the third part and that part
is not the part devoted to structure. It's the part
about material. But I'm still talking about structure. It must be
clear from that that structure has no point, and,
as we have seen, form has no point either. Clearly we are be-
ginning to get nowhere
Unless some other i-dea crops up a-bout it that is

all I have to say about structure
l\J'
Now about material: is it interesting ?
It is and it isn't But one thing is
certain. If one is making something which is to be nothing
the one making must love and be patient with
the material he chooses. Otherwise he calls attention to the
material, which is precisely something whereas it was
nothing that was being made; or he calls attention to
himself, whereas nothing is anonymous
The technique of handling materials is, on the sense level
what structure as a discipline is on the rational level
a means of experiencing nothing
l\J'
I remember loving sound before 1 ever took a music lesson
And so we make our lives by what we love
(Last year when 1 talked here 1 made a short talk.
That was because I was talking about something but
this year 1 am talking about nothing and
of course will go on talking for a long time .)
The other day a
pupil said, after trying to compose a melody using only
three tones, "I felt limited "
Had she con-cerned herself with the three tones -
her materials she would not have felt limited
l\J'
and since materials are without feeling,
there would not have been any limitation. It was all in her
114/ SILENCE
mind whereas it be-Ionged in the
materials It became something
by not being nothing; it would have been nothing by being
something
Should one use the
materials characteristic of one's time ?
Now there's a question that ought to get us somewhere
It is an intellectual question
I shall answer it slowly and
autobiographically
TIl'
I remember as a child loving all the sounds
even the unprepared ones. I liked them
especially when there was one at a time
A five-finger exercise for one hand was
full of beauty Later on I
gradually liked all the intervals
As I look back
I realize that I be-gan liking the octave I accepted the
major and minor thirds. Perhaps, of all the intervals,
I liked these thirds least Through the music of
Grieg, I became passionately fond of the fifth
TIl'
Or perhaps you could call it puppy-doglove
for the fifth did not make me want to write music: it made me want to de-
vote my life to playing the works of Grieg
When later I heard modem music,
I took, like a duck to water, to all the modem intervals: the sevenths, the
seconds, the tritone, and the fourth
I liked Bach too a-bout this time but I
didn't like the sound of the thirds and sixths. What I admired in
Bach was the way many things went together
As I keep on re-membering, I see that I never
really liked the thirds, and this explains why I never really
liked Brahms
LECTURE ON NOTHIN0/115
Modem music fascinated me with all its modem intervals: the
sevenths, the seconds, the tritone, and the fourth and
always, every now and then, there was a fifth, and that pleased me
Sometimes there were single tones, not intervals at
all, and that was a delight. There were so many in-
tervals in modem music that it fascinated me rather than that I loved it, and being
fascinated by it I de-cided to write it. Writing it at
first is difficult: that is, putting the mind on it
takes the ear off it However, doing it alone,
I was free to hear that a high sound is different from a
low sound even when both are called by the same letter. After several years of
working alone I began to feel lonely.
lll'
Studying with a teacher, I learned that the intervals have
meaning; they are not just sounds but they imply
in their progressions a sound not actually present to the ear
Tonality. I never liked tonality
I worked at it Studied it. But I never had any
feeling for it for instance: there are some pro-
gressions called de-ceptive cadences. The idea is this: progress in such a way
as to imply the presence of a tone not actually present; then
fool everyone by not landing on it - land somewhere else. What is being
fooled ? Not the ear but the mind
The whole question is very intellectual
However modem music still fascinated me
with all its modem intervals But in order to

have them the mind had fixed it so that one had to a-
void having pro-gressions that would make one think of sounds that were
not actually present to the ear Avoiding
did not ap-peal to me I began to see
that the separation of mind and ear had spoiled the sounds
that a clean slate was necessary. This made me
not only contemporary , but "avant-garde." I used noises
They had not been in-tellectualized; the ear could hear them
directly and didn't have to go through any abstraction a-bout them
116/SILENCE
1 found that I liked noises even more than I
liked intervals. I liked noises just as much as I had liked single sounds
TU'
Noises, too
had been dis-criminated against and being American,
having been trained to be sentimental, I fought for noises. I liked being
on the side of the underdog
I got police per-mIssIOn to play sirens. The most amazing noise
I ever found was that produced by means of a coil of wire attached to the
pickup arm of a phonograph and then amplified. It was shocking,
really shocking, and thunderous Half intellectually and
half sentimentally , when the war came a-long, I decided to use
only quiet sounds There seemed to me
to be no truth, no good, in anything big in society.
TU'
But quiet sounds were like loneliness or
love or friendship Permanent, I thought
values, independent at least from
Life, Time and Coca-Cola I must say
I still feel this way but something else is happening
I begin to hear the old sounds
the ones I had thought worn out, worn out by
intellectualization- I begin to hear the old sounds as
though they are not worn out Obviously, they are
not worn out They are just as audible as the
new sounds. Thinking had worn them out
And if one stops thinking about them, suddenly they are
TU'
fresh and new. "If you think you are a ghost
you will become a ghost " Thinking the sounds
worn out wore them out So you see
this question brings us back
where we were: nowhere or,
if you like where we are
I have a story: "There was once a man
standing on a high elevation. A company of several men who happened to be walking on the road
noticed from the distance the man standing on the high place and talked among themselves about
this man. One of them said: He must have lost his favorite animal. Another man said
No, it must be his friend whom he is looking for. A third one said:
He is just enjoying the cool air up there. The three could not a-gree and the dis-
111'
cussion (Shall we have one later?) went on until they reached the high
place where the man was One of the three
asked: 0, friend standing up there have you not
lost your pet animal ? No, sir, I have not lost any
The second man asked Have you not lost your friend
? No, sir I have not lost my friend
either The third man asked: Are you not enjoying
the fresh breeze up there? No, sir
I am not What, then
are you standing up there for
if you say no to all our
questions ? The man on high said
111'
I just stand
If there are
no questions, there are no answers If there are questions
then, of course, there are answers but the
final answer makes the questions seem absurd
whereas the questions, up until then, seem more intelligent
than the answers Somebody asked De-
bussy how he wrote music. He said:
I take all the tones there are, leave out the ones I don't want, and
use all the others Satie said
When I was young, people told me: You'll see when you're fifty years old
Now I'm fifty I've seen nothing
111' 111'
Here we are now at the beginning
of the fourth large part of this talk.
More and more I have the feeling that we are getting
nowhere. Slowly as the talk goes on
we are getting nowhere and that is a pleasure
118/SILENCE
It is not irritating to be where one is It is
only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else. Here we are now
a little bit after the beginning of the
fourth large part of this talk
More and more we have the feeling
that I am getting nowhere
Slowly as the talk goes on
11l'
slowly we have the feeling
we are getting nowhere. That is a pleasure
which will continue If we are irritated
it is not a pleasure Nothing is not a
pleasure if one is irritated but suddenly
it is a pleasure and then more and more
it is not irritating (and then more and more
and slowly ). Originally
we were nowhere and now, again
we are having the pleasure
of being slowly nowhere. If anybody
is sleepy let him go to sleep
11l'
Here we are now at the beginning of the
third unit of the fourth large part of this talk.
a little bit after the beginning of the third unit of the

TIl'
fifth unit of the fourth large part of this talk.
a little bit after the beginning of the fifth unit of the

TIl'
120/SILENCE
Here we are now at the middle
of the fourth large part of this talk.
a little bit after the middle oftha
1\1'
1\1'
Here we are now at the beginning oftha
ninth unit of the fourth large part of this talk.
a little bit after the beginning of the ninth unit of the
lll'
lll'

eleventh unit of the fourth large part of this talk.
a little bit after the beginning of the eleventh unit of the
lll'
122/SILENCE
TIl'
Here we are now at the beginning of the thir-
teenth unit of the fourth large part of this talk.
a little bit after the beginning of the thir-teenth unit of the

T1l' T1l'
TIl'
That is finished now. It was a pleasure
And now this is a pleasure.
"Read me that part a-gain where I disin-herit everybody
The twelve-tone row is a method; a
method is a control of each single
note. There is too much there there
There is not enough of nothing in it A structure is
like a bridge from nowhere to nowhere and
anyone may go on it noises or tones
corn or wheat Does it matter which
? I thought there were eighty-eight tones
You can quarter them too
TIl'
If it were feet would it be a two-tone row
? Or can we fly from here to where
124/SILENCE
? I have nothing against the twelve-tone row;
but it is a method, not a structure
We really do need a structure so we can see
we are nowhere Much of the music I love
uses the twelve-tone row but that is not why I
love it. I love it for no reason
I love it for suddenly I am nowhere
(My own music does that quickly for me .)
And it seems to me I could listen forever
to Japanese shakuhachi music or the Navajo
Yeibitchai Or I could sit or

stand near Richard Lippold's Full Moon
any length of time
Chinese bronzes how I love them
But those beauties

which others have made, tend to stir up
the need to possess and I know
I possess nothing
Record collections
that is not music
The phonograph is a thing, - not a musical instrument

A thing leads to other things, whereas a musical instrument
leads to nothing
Would you like to join a society called Capitalists Inc.
? (Just so no one would think we were Communists.)
Anyone joining automatically becomes president
To join you must show you've destroyed at least one hundred
records or, in the case of tape, one sound mirror
To imagine you own
any piece of music is to miss the whole point
There is no point or the point is nothing;
and even a long-playing record is a thing.
A lady from Texas said: I live in Texas
We have no music in Texas. The reason they've no
music in Texas is because they have recordings
in Texas. Remove the records from Texas
and someone will learn to sing
Everybody has a song
which is no song at all :
it is a process of singing
and when you sing
you are where you are
All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes
think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear that I know nothing.
TIl' TIl'
Afternote to LECTURE ON NOTHING

In keeping with the thought expressed above that a discussion is nothing more
than an entertainment, I prepared six answers for the first six questions asked,
regardless of what they were. In 1949 or '50, when the lecture was first
delivered (at the Artists' Club as described in the Foreword), there were six
questions. In 1960, however, when the speech was delivered for the second
time, the audience got the point after two questions and, not wishing to be
entertained, refrained from asking anything more.
The answers are:
1. That is a very good question. I should not want to spoil it with an
answer.
2. My head wants to ache.
3. Had you heard Marya Freund last April in Palermo singing Arnold
Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, I doubt whether you would ask that
question.
4. According to the Farmers' Almanac this is False Spring.
5. Please repeat the question . ..
And again .. .
And again .. .
6. I have no more answers.
126/SILENCE

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This lecture was printed in Incontri Musicali, August 1959.

There are four

I am here and there is nothing to say

This space of time is organized

That music is simple to make comes from one's willingness to ac-

Now its fourth

Now the fifth and last part

Unless some other i-dea crops up a-bout it that is

with all its modem intervals But in order to

slowly we have the feeling

slowly we have the feeling

Here we are now at the beginning of the

slowly we have the feeling

Yeibitchai Or I could sit or

But those beauties

The phonograph is a thing, - not a musical instrument

Afternote to LECTURE ON NOTHING

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