AMX+, Netflix, HBOmax, Youtube TV, Hulu, Disney+, Peacock, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, ESPN Plus, Apple TV…

Now and formerly—

What good
is all the art
of our works of art
if we lose that higher art, the art of festivals?

Formerly, all works of art
adorned the great festival road of humanity,
to commemorate high and happy moments.

Now one uses
works of art to lure aside
from the great via dolorosa* of humanity
     those who are wretched,
          exhausted,
               and sick,
and to offer them a brief lustful moment

–a little intoxication and madness.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 2, Section 89 by Friedrich Nietzsche

*road of suffering

Is this what it means to participate here and now, in these times of seemingly unlimited video streaming of content?  We must not forget the advertising, the unceasing, ever more clever effort to sell us more stuff, and services…  Especially the tedium of pharmaceutical advertisements…

We are too aware, overcome by stories of war, of climate catastrophe, of another mass shooting in Texas or in Virginia…

What is “life” for you and I?

Is life a via delorosa, the inevitable decline of being, a “slip sliding away?”

Or is life a festival of high and happy moments, adventure without end?

What will it be !?  Higher art or another serving of intoxication and madness?