4'33"

"I have nothing to say / and I am saying it / and that is poetry / as I needed it" --John Cage

In the process of writing my last post, I started on this invigorating train of thought that was sparked by a simple observation of what people choose to do given a blank (and seemingly unlimited) space on the internet. I connected that observation with an analogy my father had begun to draw on his most recent post and I hit one of those philosophical epiphanies I get on occasion. Oh I live for these moments.

Forgive me if this post seems haphazard and disorganized. There are all these overlapping ideas that are swarming in my head. This concept is far too broad to try to cram into one post, but I feel the need to do every inkling of a thought in my head justice and attempt put them all down in writing. It would not surprise me if generations of people have already expounded on the same basic idea in volumes. I am no philosopher. I am simply discovering this perspective for myself. While this may seem elementary to you, and it sure feels like I have known this for a long time, I am seeing it in a different light tonight and I want to smoothen every wrinkled thought out and internalize it completely.

It's as if I have been holding on to a few separate pieces of jigsaw this whole time, familiarizing myself with the beauty of each one, when now I finally realize that they all belong to the same puzzle.

Tonight I was, for the thousandth time, contemplating the relationship between what we choose to put on our blog and what we choose to put in our lives. I thought about how we each utilize space differently. Some of us fill that space with what is most important to us (and we each place importance on different things) while others just put in whatever they feel like at the time and we end up with too many lives and blogs filled with junk. (For now, let's choose not to address the subjective nature of "junk")

I was then reminded of what Dad wrote briefly about in his blog. He mentioned learning from the Toastmasters that "you get only limited time for your speech assignment". He wrote, "I've often been caught starting off great to find that I didn't even have enough time to get to the key points of the subject."

It made me think for a little bit. If I was only allowed a limited amount of space on my blog, what would I say? What could I cut out? Then I thought, wait a minute. I am only allowed so much time in my life. What am I saying? Are there some things I could cut out? Will I neglect to mention the key points in my speech of life before the red light flashes and the bell rings?

It's that old Steven Covey 7-habit line: "Begin with the end in mind." Dad really did manage to drill that into me after all.

A scripture comes to mind:

“And we see that death comes upon mankind, yea, the death which has been spoken of by Amulek, which is the temporal death; nevertheless there was a space granted unto man• in which he might repent; therefore this life became a probationary state; a time to prepare to meet God; a time to prepare for that endless state which has been spoken of by us, which is after the resurrection of the dead."
(Alma 12: 24)

What a difference a change in perspective makes. Photographs we put into frames suddenly have definition. Likewise, our lives would have so much more meaning when viewed within the framework of our entire existence.

For some reason, thinking about this reminded me of something I learned in an introductory music class I took here 2 years ago. Our teacher introduced me to the idea of creating art with an outline in mind. She said that just as an artist creating a masterpiece would think about how he would fill a blank canvas of a certain size, musicians likewise work with a time-frame in mind. While they could feel their way through their composition, going with the flow, their music would have a lot more structure and direction if they instead thought about how they want to fill a given amount of time.

It was in that class that I learned of the highly controversial composition by John Cage entitled 4'33". The performer of this piece sits by a piano and plays nothing, using a stopwatch to count down the 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The idea is that the piece is filled with sounds, not only from the pianist (who covers and uncovers the keys and shuffles through the pages of blank manuscript) but all the other sounds from the environment. The muttering of the spectators, the pitter-patter of rain on the roof, the beating of your heart.

While the idea intrigued me then, I did not fully appreciate its message till tonight. I suddenly realize that this goes right along with my passion for existential theory: the idea that refusing to choose is a choice. Existentialist emphasize the importance of living the authentic life. The choice between "being" and nothingness.

Just like Cage's composition, you could sit at a piano and not play anything, yet that 4 minutes and 33 seconds would still be filled with sound. One of the many philosophical conclusions that Cage had arrived at was that silence does not exist. My take on that is that we simply need to choose to exercise our freedom, our power, to make that amount of time truly ours. You could play jazz, chopsticks, a piece already written by Beethoven or something completely original in that period. Or you could simply sit there and allow the spectators to impose their noises upon your time.

Unlike having a stopwatch to count down the seconds though, most of us don't have the luxury of knowing the exact amount of time we've been allotted. I suppose a good strategy to employ could be to have a canvas that starts small, but is added on to and increases in size as time goes on. Beginning with filling that little 11" by 8" of paper with art, and just keep extending the artwork, 11" by 8" at a time, and eventually you might find yourself the creator of an entire mural at the end of this existence.

Taken separately, each fragment of that mural will tell a different story and hold a beauty of its own, but taken in context we can read a new significance in that same collection of colors and brush strokes.

That's what life is, isn't it? A collage, a mosaic of choices and experiences.

Some questions to ask myself:

Am I making use of the canvas I have been given?

Who is the artist? Is it I or the 2-year old with the Sharpie?

What do I want to create?

What does it look like right now?

Do I like my artwork so far?

What context am I viewing my masterpiece in?

What does this piece say about me?

Are there some things I need to paint over and redo?

What is my perception of the size of this canvas I am working with?

What would I do differently if my canvas was a lot smaller?

Is the media I am using getting me what I want?

Where can I learn how to be a good artist?

Will I like the final product?

Will Heavenly Father like the final product?

Carpe diem, I say. Carpe diem.

Oh if I could write papers with the same passion with which I write blogs. I'm still waiting for the day when I take my own advice and maybe start writing posts with a word-limit.