Popular arts: our religions

Tal: Where are you today?

Mu: Puzzling.

Tal: Puzzling? Do you mean you are thinking hard?

Mu: Not really. I just remember, when I read Warret's The irrational man, that I am totally ignorant of art. I wonder.

Tal: Explain yourself.

Mu: Hegel was right: we are historical 'beings.' If so, popular arts reflect the soul of our times. It is not Picasso's genious and Schoenberg's boredoom but Spielberg's fantasies and Elton John's love songs. There we find ourselves.

Tal: Meaning?

Mu: That the elite is totally dead, that the masses rule and that in understanding popular art we understand ourselves.

Tal: We? What are we?

Mu: Lost souls, my friend. We are lost souls.

Tal: But you puzzle. Why?

Mu: Because we cannot overcome our loneliness. Lost souls are lost because they are absolutely alone; they cannot reach the other and dead awaits them.

Tal: Death?

Mu: It is coming and we cannot do a thing to stop it.

Tal: And art?

Mu: It replaced philosophy and religion as our guide in life. Reason cannot understand it.

Tal: Let us drink to that.