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Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States
Professor of Saxophone, James Madison University

Thursday, June 14, 2012

John Cage's Ten Rules for Teachers and Students

This is attributed to John Cage.  Right on!


RULE 1: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.
RULE 2:  GENERAL DUTIES AS A STUDENT
              Pull everything out of your teacher.
              Pull everything out of your fellow students.
RULE 3:  GENERAL DUTY AS A TEACHER
              Pull everything out of your students.
RULE 4:  Consider everything an experiment.
RULE 5: Be self disciplined.
             This means finding someone smart or wise and choosing to follow
             them.
             To be disciplined is to follow in a good way.
             To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
RULE 6:  Follow the leader.
              Nothing is a mistake.
              There is no win and no fail.
              There is only make.
RULE 7:  The only rule is work.
              If you work it will lead to something.
              It is the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually
              catch onto things.
              You can fool the fans - but not the players.
RULE 8:  Do not try to create and analyze at the same time.
              They are different processes.
RULE 9:  Be happy whenever you can manage it. 
              Enjoy yourself. 
              It is lighter than you think.
RULE 10: We are breaking all the rules, even our own rules
               and how do we do that?
               By leaving plenty of room for 'x' qualities.
HELPFUL HINTS:
                Always be around.  Come or go to everything.  Always go to classes.
                Read everything you can get your hands on. 
                Look at movies carefully and often.
                Save everything.  It may come in handy later.

1 comment:

  1. An interesting post, with some clarification to the actual source of the rules can be found here:

    http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/10/10-rules-for-students-and-teachers-john-cage-corita-kent/

    ReplyDelete