Any extended observation of culture will witness the diminishing and extinction of certain shallow, once dominant, yet short-lived forces in society and the arts.
Unlike the personal effects of a deceased individual, the artifacts that remain have no connection, however brief or tenuous, to a past reality that is gone as surely as if it had never existed.
This is a defining principle of the arts: to lift perception, and thus experience, beyond the common currency of bombast and poorly engaged ideals, into a realization of abstract, permanent things.
Unlike the personal effects of a deceased individual, the artifacts that remain have no connection, however brief or tenuous, to a past reality that is gone as surely as if it had never existed.
This is a defining principle of the arts: to lift perception, and thus experience, beyond the common currency of bombast and poorly engaged ideals, into a realization of abstract, permanent things.
