“Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.”
—John Cage, Silence (quoted in Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise)
I posted this Cage quote this morning and — I kid you not! — for tonight’s reading, my son Jules picked Jean Horton Berg and Art Seiden’s 1950 picture book, The Noisy Clock Shop, a story of a clock shop owner who tries desperately to escape the noise of the city only to to find the noises of the country. From the jacket copy: “[N]o matter where he goes (the train, the countryside, and the woods), he can’t find any peace. There’s noise everywhere!”
