Works that are historically important then gather an aura of reverence around them, which makes comparing them to contemporary things seem overly flattering to new works, or maybe heretical to some. But I’m more inclined to think, sounds about right. Joyce was probably just a joker of his time, flying off the handle with his really intense literary mashup ideas. I think all artists in history who we regard as doing important work were probably just as full of shit as we all are today. Lives checkered with doubts, contradictions, embarrassments, ridiculous indulgences, but through dedication and artifice leave behind works that promote illusions of people in total control, and endowed with endless depth. Like building a hall of mirrors, letting people marvel at reflections of themselves and how far back it all seems to go, then sitting back and taking credit for the very concept of reflection itself, as well as infinity.

But I also think what emerges as important tends to be a product of how much stuff there is to pick from. The further back you go, the slimmer the pickins get. A hundred years ago, there were artists and authors, as opposed to “content creators”. What would we think if the creative world a century ago was comprised of millions of content creators? Would even trying to sift through it to make judgments on relevance cause us to despair? Would the literati be saying things like, “Don’t even get me started on Joyce’s Instagram account.” What’s it going to be like a hundred years from now? Will they say, “Yes, there were several hundred million people with YouTube accounts. But there was this one guy named Pewdie Pie who was absolutely crushing it out there. He was CRUSHING IT!” Will his Wikipedia page say something like, “’Pewdie is considered to be one of the most important pioneers of modernist vlogging and has been called ‘a demonstration and summation of the entire movement.’ [2] According to Declan Kiberd, ‘Before Pewdie, no vlogger of Let’s Plays had so foregrounded the process of thinking.’ [3]”

I guess what I’m saying is, I have this nagging sense that we may be in danger of overvaluing the concepts of artistic importance and legacy in the creative atmosphere that has resulted from the internet. History may, in fact, be laughing at us. Maybe a creator’s job today isn’t to make important things or leave a legacy, but to make sure people in the future are laughing for the right reasons.