In the Chance class, we read an interview with John Cage where he said that the most profound music to him now was the honking of cars on Sixth Avenue. This was because he no longer “needed” the structure and overbearingness of “what we call music.” “If something is boring after two minutes,” Cage wrote, “try it for four . . . then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two.” I sighed. Only someone who was already old and famous could say something like that—that some randomly occurring garbage was the greatest art form. I couldn’t go around being like, “Here’s the sounds of Sixth Avenue. Oh, it
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