Silence

Chance.

John Cage's 4'33”. 

At first I thought it was the dumbest thing I ever heard, to take silence and call it music. 

How can you say that someone “composed” silence, or that they own it? 

It looks really dumb seeing a guy sitting there and not playing the piano for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. 

But truly, it is brilliant. It makes one question, what is music really? 

Is music the beautiful sounds of flutes and violins played for people who want to enjoy the music or dance to it? 

Is music the loud blaring pop that we listen to today? 

Or perhaps the jazz that was so popular, with all the instruments that came with it. 

Methods of chance are weird, make up strange sounds, take objects that we would not normally think of as instruments and use them to compose what can only be referred to as noise and that I would ask someone, no insist that they turn it off. 

It is torturous to listen to it and think thatanyone can possibly call that music. 

But to think that someone could block out a portion of silence and call it music, learn to listen to the sounds, a portion of time can never be duplicated, the idea of it is brilliant. 

Even if I would never choose to listen to it.