Art Is Dead

Where's the crack of the unconscious? I mean the great gulf. Hammers strike here and there, feeling for the place. The old axes grind on the rusted, still turning wheels of artists' brains. Sharp enough to fork the squeamish folds, and drive a wedge between the hemispheres, in hope that some new daemon will scrabble out with his madness still intact. But nothing works to open the crevice wide. Maybe a puddle of insects wells up and spills over into somewhere, another corner of the brain, to feed on whatever's left. But there's no real passion. No beasts break forth. No wild bulls in the china shop where antique pleasantries line the shelves and stick out their pale, dull tongues.

If a man had an ounce of passion the whole world would hail greatness in him. Women in every country would howl again. Panties would drop, and get kicked to the side, all moist and crumpled like our minds are now. But nobody's got it. Still, you see the poets, or would-be poets (there are no poets left) whisper together in the cafés, leaning into each other's ears. "Where is it?" they want to know. Yeah, we all want to know. "Who's got it?" Man, don't bother. Don't you know, it would be front page news: ART FOUND

But we're all a bunch of third-rate Nietzsches, ringing our bells in the public squares, announcing the death of art. And wondering where are the true explorers of the unconscious. Not long ago we were feverish, hunting desperately for the new worlds, the undiscovered continents of the mind. Now, we haven't the vital breath left for desperation, but we're lazily still turning over rocks and mental blocks. Unaware that we are ghosts.

Sex is blown up. There's no discovering it now. It's everywhere before you've got whiskers on your balls or curls on your cunt. It used to be something you went looking for down dark corridors with a lit torch between your legs. Now it's just the way to hawk a hamburger. At least, in its prudishness, the world had reverence for it once.