Anyway, I’ve tried to get published and have had no luck. One could indeed infer it’s a class club. I’ve even asked a few times for ay kind of feedback as to why my work is unworthy for publication and get these half-assed non-committal aversions. You start digging and find things like ghostwriters, PR agents, trust funds, familial hookups, and all the other little Oompa Lompas of BSing pushing whoever has the cash or the pedigree to play adult make-believe. Never just good work getting it’s due.

And because we’ve been told it’s a “meritocracy” you do start cultivating those sour grapes like in your article here… what else do you have? Money allows people to pretend to be whatever they want. And if you’re just a guy with a job and a love of the art then you have little hope to play the game too; unless you have something novel about you like alcoholism or drug addiction for rich folk to latch onto in order to give themselves “street cred” and teenagers to latch onto because a petty level of “naughty” behavior is the only standard they grade things to – never just the work. Never what’s being said. “Gild the bars of the petty cages we’ve built – tell us our ugliness is beautiful and our deceptions noble”. That’s all they want you to do.

When the culture no longer studies the craft of poetry, painting, and music then the tools to discern what is good from what is merely artifice and posturing is gone – and all we’re left with are the same rich posers; who come in all shades and dominate every industry. Skin color doesn’t come into the class club – your ability to play pretend is all that counts. Ever seen a Warhol painting? The Emperor’s New Reality – the one we’re living in.

Art is supposed to be a dialog about what it is to be human and to feel and to be alive… and in that respect nothing has changed Art is now about how well you become a brand, live a lie, and what you have to offer people to buy and buy into. Hypocrisy is a given. A human centipede of fictitious persona gnawing at each other in the hopes of ascending the coil. And, ultimately, a place-holder of pretentious name-dropping, thuggery, or gaudy noise where Art used to be. Art has become irrelevant unless it’s a mirror of our own lie of who we want to be perceived as. It’s the necessary prop in the costume of pretending to be an artist.

But distracted by this noise, and the game-show histrionics, we never have to face ourselves and self-awareness. Never face the fact we are so fragile and impermanent, that we’re here to go. Never have to face the fact that all culture is just make-believe. And as the scientist wants us to know – We come from Nothing and we go to Nowhere, and forever and ever; Amen.

I guess even in it’s plasticity and venality art can never lie. So it goes, huh? So it goes. The ultimate and final work of the species could be the installation of our own extinction.

But there’s always hope – they can’t take that away from you. Keep working. Art is what is created despite the fakers and the phoneys not because of them. Keep going.