Art is dead. Long live art!

A few months ago, I wrote what may turn out to be my last poem. There's a part of me that that would love to put together more words, this time to tell you how we are one, how you and I are a universe, all by ourselves, a singularity that split itself in two in order to experience tango. How it isn't only you and I that make up a universe, but you and her, me and him, as many combinations (or permutations) as you can imagine, and more, because there are enough dimensions that we can each hold hands with everyone at once.

But I keep thinking that the truth is bigger than anything that can be captured, not just by me, but even by great artists, even by Madeline L’Engle or Ursula K. Le Guin. I once loved their stories, yet now it seems like fiction and poetry are distractions, spoonsful of sugar to make a materialist, world-bound life tolerable.

I have to agree with Daniel Pinchbeck, who says that “most contemporary fiction, like most current film, has an increasingly retrograde quality.” It’s evidence of our past, like old high-heeled shoes, left over from before we realized we deserve better. It’s time to let go of our tendency toward “inciting and then placating the desires and fears of the individual ego.”