Dallas Taylor

It really took off, and soon there was constant background music, nearly everywhere.

It was almost impossible to escape.

John Cage realized that people were losing the option to shut out the background music of the world.

He worried that Muzak would prevent people from hearing silence altogether.

In 1948, four years before he wrote 433, John Cage mentioned that he wanted to write a four and a half minute long piece of silence and sell it to the Muzak Company.

It started as something of a political statement or an offhand comment, but this idea struck a nerve and quickly evolved.

John Cage was starting to think deeply about silence.

And when he visited a truly quiet place, he made a startling discovery.

John Cage visited an anechoic chamber at Harvard University.

Anechoic chambers are rooms that are acoustically treated to minimize sound to almost zero.

There are no sounds in these rooms, so John Cage didn't expect to hear anything at all.

But he actually heard his own blood circulating.

I've personally experienced an anechoic chamber, and it's a really wild experience that can completely change your perceptions about sound and silence.

It really felt like my brain just turning up an amplifier, grasping for anything to hear.

Just like John Cage, I could very clearly hear my blood pushing through my body.

John Cage realized in that moment that no matter where we are, even our bodies are making sound.

There's basically no such thing as true silence.

As long as you are in your body, you're always hearing something.

This is where John Cage's interest in chance and randomness met his interest in silence.

He realized that creating an environment with no distractions wasn't about creating silence.