The role of the composer is other than it was. Teaching, too, is no longer transmission of a body of useful information, but’s conversation, alone, together, whether in a place appointed or not in that place… We talk, moving from one idea to another as though we were hunters… (By music we mean sound; but what’s time? Certainly not that something begins and ends.) … (Hunted mushrooms in muskeg nearby. Got lost.) … A teacher should do something other than filling in the gaps… What we learn isn’t what we’re taught nor what we study. We don’t know what we’re learning. Something about society? … Something about art? That it’s experience shared?
— JOHN CAGE, Diary: Emma Lake Music Workshop 1965
Quoted in MUSICAGE by John Cage & Joan Retallack
