I do not feel that I have nothing important to say when I write about these things. Fortunately, most readers don t either. I remember telling an audience 10 years ago during a book launching about how I thought the demarcation between politics and economics on one hand and culture and the arts on the other was an artificial one. That division carried with it implicit judgments of important and unimportant, judgments reviewers of books, movies, and food know only too well and rightfully resent. I refuse to acknowledge that line of demarcation in column-writing.
Art is just as important as politics, culture is just as important as economics.
In the scheme of things though most readers will probably not agree with me on this one they are more so. Or thinking them to be the most useless things in the world, which of course they are in a sense. That is the greater impoverishment, not knowing you are deprived. I cannot imagine a more a tragic figure than a rich person who collects paintings for the sheer joy of acquiring them, even though he cannot distinguish a Manansala from an Egay Fernandez. I cannot imagine a more pitiable figure than a rich person who hoards rare recordings for the sheer joy of knowing he has them, even though he cannot tell a Duke Ellington from a Cole Porter.