NOLA The Cat Performs John Cage's 4'33"
from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

虽然有点过度消费猫猫，也有过度消费凯奇，但是我就喜欢。今天是约翰·凯奇诞辰110周年[蛋糕]。今年也是《4分33秒》首演70周年（1952年8月29日）。

大家都知道，《4分33秒》的含义不在于“安静”或者“无声”，更不是“无声胜有声”。而是意图大家注意到，当音乐停止时，现场发生的任何的偶然的声音，以及声音的意义。引发凯奇创作《4分33秒》的两件事其实很能说明这部作品的意义或意图。第一件事是凯奇去哈佛大学的消音室参观，他本以为能听到绝对的安静，然而实际上他听到了各种声音，如耳鸣，如心跳。第二件事是来自凯奇的朋友，画家 Robert Rauschenberg 创作的“白色系列”画作，本质上就是刷满白色涂料的画布，然而凯奇注意到在室内光线变化、人影等环境影响下，画布呈现的明暗色彩不同。因此这部作品的本质意图是让听众去倾听，去发现在音乐停止时才容易发现的，音乐以外的声音。于无声处听到惊雷，这也是凯奇十多年对禅宗研究的体现。

而这些声音是不需要像音乐作品那样非得“有意义”的，这也是凯奇喜爱它们的地方。凯奇去世前1年（1991年）在他纽约第六大道家中有过一段简短的采访录像讨论“sound”和“silence”：

“I love sounds just as they are, and i have no need for them to be anything more than what they are. I don't want them to be psychological, I don't want a sound to pretend that it's a bucket or that it's a president, or that it's in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound.”

“There was a a German philosopher who's very well known, Emmanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don't have to mean anything. One is music and the other is laughter. Don't have to mean anything that is in order to give us very deep pleasure. The sound experience which I prefer to all others is the experience of silence, and the silence almost everywhere in the world now is the traffic.... If you listen to beethoven or to mozart you see that they're always the same, but if you listen to traffic you see it's always different.”

“I couldn't be happier than I am in this apartment, with the sounds from Sixth Avenue constantly surprising me, never once repeating themselves. You know the story of the African prince who went to London, and they played a whole program of music for him, orchestral music, and he said, 'Why do you always play the same piece over and over?’ They never do that on Sixth Avenue.” http://t.cn/A6SWNsEe