Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words. And suddenly he realized that all his life he had done nothing but talk, write, lecture, concoct sentences, search for formulations and amend them, so in the end no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, chaff dust, sand; prowling through his brain, tearing at his head. they were his insomnia, his illness. And what he yearned for at that moment, vaguely, but with all his might, was unbounded music, absolute sound, a pleasant and happy all-encompassing, over-poering, window-rattling din to engulf, once and for all, the pain, the futility, the vanity of words. Music was the negation of sentences, music was the anti-word! . Milan Kundera
About This Quote

In this quote by John Cage, he discusses the idea of noise. He believes that there is a certain type of music which can “overcome” sound and produce a “window rattling” sound. Cage believes that with the noise cancelling music, words will be “overcome” and forgotten. In his book, “In His Own Time: Diaries 1969-1974,” he explains that when he is in a crowd of people, noise from the crowd will often drown out his words and he will sometimes stop and stare at the people around him in order to regain his voice again.

Source: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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