John Cage’s song 4'33" receives a lot of criticism and jest because it’s decidedly un-song-like in that there isn’t a single note played during its entire duration.
4'33" could be a statement of many things, including the idea that the absence of any apparent noise, if we bothered sit with it, is actually a warm invitation to clear the palette of one’s mind, or to pay closer attention to one’s surroundings and subsequently more fully appreciate them.
The fact that some people don’t take the piece seriously feels analogous to our occasionally flippant attitude towards something many of us could be substantially reinvigorated by if only we approached it with more earnest: silence, empty space, emptiness, disengagement without the troublesome guilt instilled in us by Puritans.
In the same way machines over heat and become less effective in all manners from over use, so too do our minds and our spirits when we’re constantly engaging them without pause.
Many lament the need to sleep, or more specifically the notion that 1/3 of our lives must be spent unconscious as if it were a total waste, all while conveniently ignoring the fact that the 1/3 seeds the the remaining 2/3 with vigor.
The act of pausing deserves to be taken seriously.
