[b]John Cage
It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.[/b]
Like this is [more often than not] a distinction with a difference.
College: two hundred people reading the same book. An obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books.
In 200 classes for example.
I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I’m doing.
Perhaps even as unfamiliar as you are.
The world is teeming; anything can happen.
But: For any particular one of us at any particular time, it all gets narrowed down considerably.
What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life–not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.
Come on, for any particular one of us at any particular time, what are the odds it’s anywhere near this convoluted?
The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accordance with nature, in her manner of operation.
For example, in an essentially absurd and meaningless world. A world in which everyone and everything becomes but the brute facticity of, well, something.