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About this quote

What does it mean?
A completed work is static and requires new life to remain relevant.
In plain terms
Finished art needs to be reborn to stay alive.
What can you take from it?
Keep your work open to reinterpretation.

Where it applies

  • reviewing old projects
  • exhibiting art
  • teaching classics

Putting it to work

  • Revisit finished drafts
  • Invite new interpretations

Questions to consider

  • When does a work truly end?
  • How do you keep things fresh?

Another view

Not all work needs constant revival.

More from John Cage

  1. Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?

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  2. A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration--it is occupied…

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  3. I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and more completely liberate sounds from abs…

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