He has not worked for a while. He feels no urgency. He could let his art slip away, ride his bike, buy a cardigan and slippers. The problem of judgements occupies Him. He recalls the moment when he came across the notion of the ‘universal subjective validity’ of judgements of taste. How strange to be sitting in a library reading such stuff and to feel so delighted. It confirmed a suspicion that he had carried around but could not fully articulate. His enduring inability to be joyful in the company of ‘art’ and in the company of joyful others leads him to suspect the commission of a lifelong error. It’s somehow to do with the finding of a space, and the wrong space, in which to be. There is a strangeness of being that can be controlled if a place can be found for it, where He can ‘be’ with it. Differences of opinion emerge from differences of feeling? Or is it that we each ascribe meaning to similar events with differing terms? Points of view, opinions, are everywhere, and it can look as though we know what we are talking about, because we behave as though we know what we are talking about. Does this simply follow from confidence disguising ignorance? And there is scholarship. He has begun to recognise the truth that ‘It’ offers, that He has more opinions than understandings. It is no compensation to know that such is a common human condition. It is the foundation of his loss of urgency. His art may be a mistake.
