How can you make a group of reasonable people almost go insane? Ask John Cage. John Cage was a prolific music composer, and just to make it clear, unfortunately he isn’t the father of Nicolas. But like Nicolas, he too had his oddities. His avant-garde style culminated into the famous 4’33”, which was a surprise to many, as within his orchestral compositions, came this masterpiece which some consider to be his most famous. What’s the catch? The piece happened to have no sound at all.

Now, I think I would definitely become surprised at this. But what about an entire audience? What goes through their mind when they hear this sudden sound of nothingness coming from the orchestra? Do they think, “have the performers all forgotten how to play their instruments? Have they gone mad?” Do they think that John Cage is lazy? Or that he too is mad? Probably all these things in fact and more. They have quite a lot of time to think in silence. And this perhaps is the reason why the piece is so famous. It heightens the senses to hear things which would usually be un-noticed.

And in this way, Cage proves that even in ‘silence’ there is sound, and the heightening of being uncomfortable creates an atmosphere which definitely creates tension. And he does this by doing absolutely nothing. Thats pretty cool. Audiences no longer hearing what they expect creates a mental chaos for a whole four minutes and thirty-three seconds. And that’s how you can help make a group of sound-minded people go nearly insane.