speaking of ashes

So why "no cynicism" ? Cynicism is a generation of college level art teachers who believe that art can not be taught. That there are too many and too complicated theories of art to ever navigate them, and the one that is merely satisfactory or fashionable is worth clinging to and exploiting. Cynicism is believing that all those people who want art, who want to be impressed by it, will be impressed by anything that they don't understand. Cynicism is believing that art is pointless anyway, that it never changed people in the past and can't actually change them now and so what we have instead is an utterly repugnant capitalism that we should exploit before it exploits us. Cynicism is about not believing anything, even if belief is only temporary, or willing to change. Cynicism is not even that. Cynicism is a rock solid faith in nihilism. Not the quaint fatalistic nihilism of the dadaists and the people who knew what watching 40,000 people die in one battle actually meant. We have now a cynicism that learning that 40,000 people are dying because of us is without meaning because art is without meaning. What meaning we could conjur would be just as easily wiped out by one stroke of a copywriter's pen. Mind you, not a journalist's pen. Incidentally this is my new cat.