Cage

            There is a great contradictory relationship between silence and noise. Silence is defined as the complete absence of sound. Noise on the other hand is defined as a sound. I think that pure silence is unattainable in the word, at least while the earth is rotating. You could go to the quietest place on earth, maybe somewhere in the mountains or in the middle of a random island, but there would still be sound. The sound could be coming from the waves or wind in the trees. It could also be noises that human ears can’t pick up such as, insects crawling, the heater in the cottage starting, or the birds landing on each branch. So even though people enjoy silence and what it means in humanistic terms, silence is not truly in place without some type of noise there.

            In a Lecture on Nothing, John Cage includes silence in his almost music sheet layout of the work. The way he sets up the sentences on the page make them look as though they are measures in music. There are also these huge spaces between the words and punctuation. The spaces indicate silence within the “music”, while the words on the page or the “music” its self can represent noise. Noise doesn’t always have to relate to sound. Noise can also be used to describe something visually. For instance, “That painting is too noisy.” This would mean that there are so many things going on in the painting that it’s overwhelming. With this said, Cage could also be writing these words into measure to make them seem noisy on the page. The noisiness of the page could be broken up by pieces of silence, which they are.

            Chance also plays a part in Cage’s piece. Chance had control over what words stayed within what measure but overall how the columns and silent spaces were worked into the page. I really think the word formatting was due to chance. Also there’s the idea that chance is unpredictable and unexpected but noise and sound are known for having a time and place. So it’s interesting that Cage would write with chance as a backbone to his formatting while also including some silent aspects as well.

            John Cage claims, “[he has] nothing to say and [he is] saying it and that is poetry as [he] need[s] it.” Normally there would be meaning put into a piece but since Cage has nothing to say there is no structure he has to follow in his piece. Meaning that since he so quotably has nothing to say then his work should be filled with empty space. His piece is filled with empty spaces and those spaces are the silence in which he claims he has nothing to talk about. Noise comes into play here because silence is being “said.” When someone says something it usually has a sound or visual of what they want to say. That’s noise but it could also be related to silence since the silence on the page is visually telling the readers something. This is my reflection on the relationship between silence and noise and how chance relates in that.