Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[john saylor <>]

greeting

On 7/18/12, Semih Firincioglu 
<>
 wrote:
> Talking about meaning: I kind of got stuck with the translation of "I have
> nothing to say and I am saying it," believe it or not. In English it may
> mean "I don't have anything to say and that is what I am saying" or "all I
> have is "nothing" and that "nothing" is what I am delivering." You can go
> only in one direction in Turkish and I took the first route but it still
> bugs me. Appropriately obsessive and possibly silly, I guess.

not silly at all to my way of thinking. this is one of his most famous
quotations, and also ripe with multiple meanings, as you mention. it
is really true that you can go only one direction in turkish? perhaps
you meant only one way to go with a turkish translation of these
particular words.

while i don't know many of them by name, i know there have been many
turkish poets over the long history during which [imaginative and
literary] people have been living in that region. multiple meanings
are one of the poet's main tricks, so it seems odd to me that you
can't do anything like this in turkish.

perhaps i am only misunderstanding what you have said.

-- 
\js [http://or8.net/~johns/] : "complete obscure contrariness";