Status Updates From Sextet: Six essays

I see only what the artist intended me to perceive.

forty of fifty lusty bass voices

And from wraith to wraith, caught as they are in the myriad filaments of a giant cocoon, tremors pass convulsive as the shudders of an incinerated octopus.

As long as the rich rule there will be chaos, wars, revolutions.

We need men who despair as well as men who hope. But above all, we need the riches of Europe. America is an impoverished land: it has everything and nothing.

Truth is unimportant, justice is unimportant. What is important is that "we carry on." "Business as usual," no matter where it leads us. Give us any kind of trash, but keep the cinemas going!

And this, I notice, is precisely the ritual of life which is practiced by the man who evolves. He doesn't go back, figuratively, to correct his errors and defects: he transposes and converts them into virtues.

So far a great collection of writings. Their are poignant remarks that very much resemble the current state of affairs we find ourselves in 60 years later. Page 28 of my copy has a great passage in reference to World War 2 but applies just as much to our war(s) on terror today.