SOURCE: Cage, John, and Richard Kostelanetz. “Empty Words (1974-1975).” In John Cage (ex)plain(ed), pp. 115-32. New York: Schirmer, 1996.

In the following interview, conducted in 1974-75, Cage discusses Mureau, his work on Thoreau's Journal and explains his experiments with the structure and sound of language in Empty Words.

I was always impressed by John Cage's statement that when you build a structure that strong you can accept all sorts of things into it.

—Robert Dunn, in an interview with Don McDonagh, The Rise and Fall and Rise of Modern Dance (1970)

Language was the base of much of John Cage's work in the 1970s and 1980s—language that is meant to be read and spoken without specific pitches (that would, by contrast, make the words song). These works are not essays, or even antiessays, like his earlier “Lecture on Nothing” (1959). As literary creations these later works are generically...