Modern Mysteries

There are two major mysteries in modern life.

Their rise has been simultaneous.

Whenever I contemplated either of them
I never wondered whether their rise was coincidence.

Nor did I ask 'What is the link between them?'

The first is the near universality of Television
as society's primary means of communication
where the sense of a badly reported broken narrative
which puts the listener off wondering which it is,
was the reporting was poor or were the facts unavailable,
and also puts everyone off wanting to know better.

The second is the new language developed
by art critics to describe and sell modern art
to a sceptical public lacking in aesthetic sensibility.

This language is pretentious and appeals to the wealthy,
who buy the art knowing that the works are often simple
but the concept behind them disguises their simplicity.

What binds both modern art criticism and television
is that we cannot get beyond narrative fractured by design.