[snip]
> > Does it answer the question, or at least work toward an answer? It asks the question, certainly, though less succinctly than you did. But what good is it to anybody unless the work does something to make progress in answering that question?

Asking a question is communication. It's not a complete thought or conversation, but it does communicate a need or uncertainty. I'd like to think a work can be art and yet be dependent on other work for completion.

If an artist can successfully assemble an exhibit of pieces that are only complete as a whole, does that make the entire exhibit a work of art but each painting or sculpture less than art? It seems to me that success in that sort of undertaking would require greater artistic skill, rather than less, from the artist.

> I would offer that sometimes the point of a work of art is simply to ask the question. It may be that the art is intended to ask you to find your own answers to the question, without blocking the way with the artist's personal opinions.

Allow me to interject just how much this sounds like the intentions that drove Mr. Cage to pursue and promote musical composition in the often erratic forms that he did (e.g., a piano piece called "Water Music," in which the pianist mrely poured water back and forth between containers for the duration notated. The work calls for no actual use of the stage piano).

Cage accomplished far more in moving philosophies along about art than he did in inspiring new movements of compositional technique (as the work of Stravinsky and Schoenberg had done in previous decades).

[snip]
> As a side note, I've found that through my time as a composer (although nowhere near professional), I have a different perspective on these musical whackjobs than most people. This is music today, the way I see it:
>
> 1) Consonance is bunk.
> 2) Dissonance is bunk.
> 3) Where to next?

I love being able to end music in dissonance, not as a general rule, but for occasional effect. This drives some listeners nuts, but it drives me to continue working on, and listening to, other things.

Mi "Given, a person wouldn't be well-liked who only asked questions, but he'd still be communicating, wouldn't he?" ke