Have you ever had the realization mid-argument, that you were very wrong?
What was it about? Did you admit you were wrong or adamantly insist on your point? How did your interlocutor react? How would you like someone to react if you concede errors?
One where I realized I was wrong three times. My wife and I had visited a modern art museum. One of the installations was a pile of candy in the corner. We got home, I said it's ridiculous to call that art, and ridiculous to fund artists to create lazy, self-indulgent nonsense. She convinced me that I am in no position to arbitrate what is or isn't art (she is right, of course). Then I realized she wasn't arguing about art, she was upset about something that had happened at work (that was my second miss).
Twenty years later I found out what that candy is all about. It was a piece by Felix Gonzalez Torres called "Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) 1991" It is 175 lbs of candy that patrons are free to take. It represents his lover, Ross Laycock, who had wasted away from AIDS earlier that year (Gonzalez Torres would die from AIDS six years later). So long as there is funding for the arts, Ross is replenished endlessly. For the third miss, I was Oedipean-level wrong.
So long as there is funding for the arts, Ross is replenished endlessly.
Holy shit. What a direct and quantivative comparison to the power of memories to keep the spirit of our loved ones alive through giving (in my family's case, stories; did I enter tell you of the time when my uncle met Loretta Swit?) of ourselves and sharing them with others.
Huh. I'm no judge of art, being a low-born oaf, but in retrospect that is clearly art; and evocative as fuck.
Oh fuck, "so long as there is funding for the arts," seems very precarious right now.