silence

“…when David Tudor sat at the piano for 4 minutes and 33 seconds and never played a note, there wasn't silence. The audience could hear the sounds of nature all around them. And that's what Cage was after. He wanted his audience to listen to 4 minutes and 33 seconds of the world with the same attention and the same concentration that they would normally devote to four and a half minutes of Mozart or Beethoven or Brahms.”

HYMN by Edgar Allan Poe

“As an artist, she is totally and utterly informed by writers like Arthur Rimbaud, Allen Ginsberg, Albert Camus and countless others who inspired a young Smith to leave her hometown and seek out a poetic lifestyle. Whether she’s referencing her seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of classic works, drawing links to the beat generation she caught the tail end of, or even reworking her own poetry into song, almost every Patti Smith song has a connection to literature somewhere. “

“Many variations of wording can be found in both versions of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as they have been set down over the years. In fact, surviving manuscript copies in Burns’s own hand are not identically worded.”

Jack Kerouac, Mexico City Blues

Jan Zwicky, SONGS FOR RELINQUISHING THE EARTH