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I've got nothing to say this morning, but my buddy Wassily Kandinsky was keeping me up all night last night, yammering away. He said something like:

Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions. It follows that each period of culture produces an art of its own which can never be repeated. Efforts to revive the art-principles of the past will at best produce an art that is still-born. It is impossible for us to live and feel, as did the ancient Greeks. In the same way those who strive to follow the Greek methods in sculpture achieve only a similarity in form, the work remains soulless for all time. Such imitation is merely aping. Externally the monkey completely resembles a human being; he will sit holding a book in front of his nose, and turn over the pages with a thoughtful aspect, but his actions have for him no real meaning.

I said,

Sure Wassily, I hear you, man, but what about the spark of inner life? Put down that vodka, son, and tell me about the spark of inner life.

He poured himself another tumbler, in the old Russian fashion, right up to the lip of the glass, you know, and said:

This all-important spark of inner life today is at present only a spark. Our minds, which are even now only just awakening after years of materialism, are infected with the despair of unbelief, of lack of purpose and ideal. The nightmare of materialism, which has turned the life of the universe into an evil, useless game, is not yet past; it holds the awakening soul still in its grip. Only a feeble light glimmers like a tiny star in a vast gulf of darkness. This feeble light is but a presentiment, and the soul, when it sees it, trembles in doubt whether the light is not a dream, and the gulf of darkness reality.

Then he passed out, sleeping in his clothes on the couch. Big coat, boots, everything, just snoring and choking and coughing all night.

Russians.