Sound is acting, John Cage.

“When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings or about his ideas, of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic here on sixth avenue for instance, I do not have the feeling that anyone is talking, I have the feeling that a sound is acting, and I love the activity of sound. What it does, is it gets louder and quieter, and it gets higher and lower. And it gets longer and shorter. I am completely satisfied with that, I do not need sound to talk to me. We do not see much difference between time and space, we do not know where one begins and the other stops. (...) People expect listening to be more than listening. And sometimes they speak of inner listening, or the meaning of sound. When I talk about music, it finally comes to peoples minds that I am talking about sound that does not mean anything. That is not inner, but is just outer. And they say, these people who finally understand that say, you mean it is just sounds? To mean that for something to just be a sound is to be useless. Whereas I love sounds, just as they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more. I do not want sound to be psychological. I do not want a sound to pretend that it is a bucket, or that it is a president, or that it is in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound. And I am not so stupid either. There was a german philosopher who is very well known, his name was Emmanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that do not have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Do not have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure. The sound experience which I prefer to all others, is the experience of silence. And this silence, almost anywhere in the world today, is traffic. If you listen to Beethoven, it is always the same, but if you listen to traffic, it is always different.” Sound is acting, John Cage back