John Cage performs a 90 minute excerpt from “Empty Words” at the 1991 Subtropics Music Festival in Miami, Florida. It was a wonderful performance.
“Language free of syntax: demilitarization of language…
…I let it be known to my friends, and even strangers, as I was wandering around the country, … that what was interesting me was making English less understandable. Because when it’s understandable, well, people control one another, and poetry disappears — and as I was talking with my friend Norman O. Brown, and he said, “Syntax [which is what makes things understandable] is the army, is the arrangement of the army… So what we’re doing when we make language un-understandable is we’re demilitarizing it, so that we can do our living….” John Cage
Contributed by
Juan Pablo Macías