One day we were talking about accepting sounds as they were. I brought up the example of "Love Rollercoaster", a January 1976 number one hit, which I had played and found musically wanting. He assured me that that, too, could have musical value.
Cage's indeterminate aesthetic is completely contrary to the fixed medium of all recordings. He wanted not only his composition to be beyond his feelings and thoughts (which is why he used the aleatoric methods of tossing the I Ching), but he also wanted every performance to be fresh and unique.
All that being said, I think the most representative recording of Cage's I have ever heard is Fontana Mix. On that record, many many sound sources are used, a la music concrete' (more like sampling without a beat).
In that setting I could understand what he meant. Trains going by, radio stations being dialed, a horse whinnying, Enrico Caruso...so, why not Love Roller Coaster?
Cage didn't argue. He would simply explain until you could understand what he meant. He had answers to problems that people didn't even know that there were problems with...yet. That is a pedagogical practice I learned from him and have practiced all my life...He simply didn't argue. He elucidated when there was intelligent inquiry...or he was happy to be content with his own silence.
Talking with him made me think of talking to Einstein. In Newtonian physics, parallel lines are parallel into infinity, but when Einstein introduced the idea that the universe was in fact curved Flannery O'Connor's "All things that rise must converge" suddenly makes sense because parallel lines do intersect, eventually...Cage was exactly like that, musically.
Cage told me the story of his experience in an anechoic chamber, how he had heard his own heart beat and therefore concluded that there was never silence, only music, if we only know how to listen. I had read that before in his book "Silence", arguably the most radical book ever written on music theory, but I was entranced by his retelling it with the conviction of the redeemed.
We would discuss, deep into a bottle, or more, around the aesthetics of "Letting sounds be themselves" versus expressing feelings, the blues aesthetic I loved and believed in with the conviction of the Civil Rights movement. But, it was useless...you can't argue with a genius.