Max Florian

“The usefulness of the useless is good news for artists, for art serves no useful purpose. It has to do with changing minds and spirits.”
― John Cage

“Io voglio invece leggerezza,
libertà, comprensione
– non trattenere nessuno,
e che nessuno mi trattenga.
Tutta la mia vita
è una storia d’amore con la mia anima,
con la città in cui vivo,
con l’ albero al bordo della strada,
con l’aria.
E sono infinitamente felice.”
― Marina Cvetaeva

“I discovered that those who seldom dwell on their emotions know better than anyone else just what an emotion is.”
― John Cage

“Impersonality is only reached by the practice of a form of attention which is rare in itself and impossible except in solitude; and not only physical but mental solitude. This is never achieved by a man who thinks of himself as a member of a collectivity, as part of something which says ‘We’.
Men as parts of a collectivity are debarred from even the lower forms of the impersonal. A group of human beings cannot even add two and two. Working out a sum takes place in a mind temporarily oblivious of the existence of any other minds.
Although the personal and the impersonal are opposed, there is a way from the one to the other. But there is no way from the collective to the impersonal. A collectivity must dissolve into separate persons before the impersonal can be reached. This is the only sense in which the person has more of the sacred than the collectivity.
The collectivity is not only alien to the sacred, but it deludes us with a false imitation of it.”
― Simone Weil, Letter to a Priest