"As time and passion dwindle to a pinpoint, the audience has come to understand that it no longer need subject itself to the actual experience of art but can subsume and synthesize faster and more efficiently art that is already processed by critical interpretation. Even better or more efficient when, as the second critic responds to the first, the art is twice removed; even better as the third critic responds to the second, three times removed. When it became clear to me that that reviewers, commentators and professional observers of all stripe were the true wise men of the new epoch, I could also see that with each new exponential twist of the ongoing cultural logarithm, the artist was approaching that ideal utopian moment when he or she would vanish altogether."
Amnesiascope, Steve Erickson
"Meanwhile, the most wonderful moment of the day is that when creation in its innocence asks permission to 'be' once again, as it did on that first morning that ever was. All wisdom seeks to collect and manifest itself at that blind sweet point."
Thomas Merton, quoted by Roger Connah in 10x10
