Sometimes I've used dangerous stupifiants like religion, marijuana, chaos, the love of boys. Existence itself may be considered an abyss possessed of no meaning. I do not read this as a pessimistic statement. It helps no one conquer fear of death, but merely inculcates a morbid fear in place of the healthy fear all sentient creatures feel at the smell of their own mortality. This is not to absolve the world of its ugliness, or to deny that truly fearful things exist in it.
Art can never mean as much as a love affair, perhaps, or an insurrection.
I turn away from certain art as a dog would turn away howling from the corpse of its companion. I'd like to renounce the sophistication which would permit me to sniff it with detached curiosity as yet another example of post-industrial decomposition. Only the dead are truly smart, truly cool. Nothing touches them. Advertising, using Surrealism's colonization of the unconscious to create desire, leads to the final implosion of Surrealism.