The sight of the ocean fills us with gratitude and possibility, if we are not too close.
Two hundred years ago we changed the physical world with chemistry. Art responded with a depiction of the spirit. One hundred years ago we changed our place in the universe with physics. Art responded with the art of the gesture. Now we will change ourselves with biology – our personhood and rights. We look out on a hundred kinds of selves, a hundred worlds. Art may not respond – it may return from these worlds with news.
After 100 years, the self is no longer in crisis. There are a hundred worlds around the self, all in crisis.
The mind of the invisibly-propelled Internet is the invisible connections among us.
We seek the world of the invisible beyond the invisible. The gods have returned.
The urge for more – annihilate the past, feed the addiction to transformation. The opposite of speed is impatience.
Art has become journalism. The News: Africa is a place of pain, the career of Michael Jackson is strange, and America over consumes. It is the journalism of sadness, injustice and bewilderment, endorsed by glamour. It says the forbidden news in a place where it won’t reverberate – the museum.
It has become impossible to converse with Michelangelo. It is not impossible to converse with Rembrandt.
The wealthiest people of our time make a fortune from turning our lives into science projects, so that they may be more than science projects. They spend their money on science projects of fantasy, to make them real. Cheap spaceflight has replaced building libraries.
“I was entertained, in a culture of entertainment, for long enough that it was strange when I realized I had been waiting for my life to have more meaning. Even as my life passed, which was its meaning.”
And still, walking through the ice-covered evergreens is like walking through music.
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