The Scandalous Failure of Art and Music

The predominant market way of life with its addictive seductions and pacifying pastimes seems to have sapped our collective energy for meaningful analysis and logical decision-making. Art can change that if we have the courage to let it play a more active role.

It's so much easier though to hold difficult questions at bay — to talk about art and music only in vague pseudo-academic terms, to pontificate about protecting the treasures of the past when we should be working instead to connect our most profound ideas, ambitions and dreams to our future. One cannot speak publicly about the meaning of great art or great music or great ideas without raising terrifying questions about who we are and why we have become this way and what the next chapter of our life should be. Fortunately though, these are the very questions that art is most well equipped to answer for us.

Life should not be only about seeking success; art and music reveal that to us. And culture should not be about parading around fund raising galas pretending to understand art one secretly finds meaningless just to appear intellectual or accomplished. One of the worst things the baby boomer generation did was teach our young people they should become "successful." What a colossal mistake. What an incentive for and incitement to fakery. Indeed, society does not need more success. It needs greatness.