Cage's Music of Changes was a further indication that the arts in general were beginning to consciously deal with the 'given' material and, to varying degrees, liberating them from the inherited, functional concepts of control.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Cage always wanted to know what my structure was, if I had one. I often did have some sense of the time structure. Then he'd make a different one for the music.
Change is an internal thing. Different things happen or transform, and music and art is a documentation of that.
If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art.
Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.
I suppose an artist takes the elements of his life and rearranges them and then has them perceived by others as though they were the elements of their lives.
Music used to change people's minds - and it still changes mine.
I think all artists are only interested in a couple of themes, really. I'm primarily interested in change and connection as being this restorative force. I write about them because that's what I think about in my own life.
Music seems hard-wired into our very being. It moves us, stirs us to action, sets us in motion, sticks in our memories and minds.
An artist's early work is inevitably made up of a mixture of tendencies and interests, some of which are compatible and some of which are in conflict.
I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable.