Do you read the New York Times?

I do sometimes, most often while waiting for paint, oil, or wax to dry, because there is a stack of last year's Sunday Times kept in the wood studio for use as drop-cloths, and I usually find it depressing. It's not because of the quality of the journalism, which is very good, or the political bias, which tends to coincide fairly often with my own. It's the tone of the writing, and the aesthetic stance that informs it, particularly in articles about music and art. There's a knowingness to it, a sort of numb hipsterish point of view that yearns to be moved, but has seen too much, and is too dismissive of each new thing it sees to let it happen, as though it believes it has already thought critically a few steps ahead of the artists. Reading the Times, one might be led to believe that beauty can be found only fleetingly, in weariness, like a tiny delicate flower in a big ugly city, and it sometimes leaves me feeling tired and angry.