Sincerely, Your Friend, Yours Truly

Sincerity in art requires skill - more skill, one could argue, than required by the ironist. To put the thing on the page, or the stage, or the canvas, to lay down the track without prevarication and not have it lie there dead and bland, takes fearlessness, clear eyes, and, above all, a wiliness that the hip, with their averted gaze, their mumbled words, and their unwillingness to commit will never know, or even need. The sentiment must be conveyed with honesty, yes, but also with consummate technique. The dead eyed and unconscious have to be awakened, and not necessarily gently, to the fact that the news and the blogs and the corners of the internet that have nothing to show us but horror and degradation do not tell the whole story. Night may be coming, may already be here, but a little carefully guarded flame can give us enough light to dance until the sun comes back up.