You may be right. Hope springs eternal, and all that. I look at the culture around me and see a virtual wasteland, but I'm not exactly on the pulse of what's new and exciting.

There are still good artists out there. But at best, they make a living. I don't think we'll ever again see someone both enormously popular and actually good in that Beatles/Dylan sense. Taylor Swift and her team can write a decent tune. But I don't think anyone's going to be talking about her 100 years from now.

If I truly believed it was all useless vanity though, why would I be here lifting my head to the blows of the rain? I still think there's value in trying, like Sisyphus and his boulder. The climb is the whole point.