John Cage takes out the esoteric nature commonly associated with art making to simply enjoy it on a very physical and cerebral level. His theory that anything can be art, or any sound in his case, takes a lot of the weight off of putting a grid on what kind of art one practices. Though I can see his beliefs about art do stem from very western beliefs of mimesis which I saw when he described art as "imitating art in her manner of being". To me the idea of taking oneself out of art helps to make it a more universally understood subject.
"The highest purpose is to have no purpose." is both startling and frightfully reflective on our current state of being as we, inhabitants of an image saturated culture, have come to wonder whether injecting more images or stuff into the world is really necessary. To be purposeless, to me, implies that no longer is there anything to hold on to. No more obligations. With the abandonment of attachments in the literal sense, perhaps people can achieve a newer state of awareness as we zoom out to face the world as a whole instead of microscopic parts.
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