The question of the artist versus the ambulance driver, I’ve come to realize, isn’t a simple question of how to live. It’s a question, too, of how to promote living, how to stave off dying. The ambulance driver does it by simply entering the fray, plucking the wounded off the pavement and trying to sew them up. This is a nobel thing. It’s this nobility which makes the artist look bad, because how do you pluck the wounded off the pavement abstractly? How do you pluck yourself off the pavement? In order to live, in order justify living, we can’t just fill the space of our lives with empty amusement, with pointless light and sound and words- we’re going to have to try harder now. – Al Burian
