Leppid snorted as if he knew what I really meant to say.

"If you recall any fragment of the article," I insisted, "from the moment they made their commitment to Art, it became the most important things in their lives. They made sacrifices, Phil. They were willing to bleed for the Cause. Need I remind you that the couple who drove the Ballet of the Sand had abstained from Vigorous-Convexity-In-Voracious-Concavity for six wanking months because they thought the yearning would make the performance more poignant? And even though I am not of the school that believes celibacy is a non-consummation devoutly to be wished, I must confess that there were tears in the Scalpine Big Browners as I watched them dance. Yes the dancers were driving cars across salt flats, and yes they were smashing fenders and sideswiping each other at velocities most speedometers only dream of; but they were expressing deep things, Phil! Two souls locked inside metal hulks, trying to make contact, trying to come together, turning near collisions into ballet, and eventually using the cars themselves to make soaring gentle love.... Magic! Art! Spirit, Phil, greatness of spirit! The material is immaterial, the artifact is arbitrary. The heart, the soul, and the life of Art is the spirit. Is any of this sparking neurons, Phil, or am I just impersonating a tree falling in a forest?"

"Come on, Jonny, I know what you really want is to get a little wild."

I sighed deeply. The difference between a Sensitive-Critic-Known-Respected-And-Feared-In-All-Corners-Of-The-Galaxy and an Opportunistic-Boor-Who-Might-Have-Three-Degrees-But-Doesn't-Know-Titian-From-Turds is that one of us has eyes that see and ears that hear, while the other has an assortment of prejudices he waits to have confirmed. "Phil," I told him, "you are getting wild, the car is getting wild, and the lava is getting positively livid. I, on the other hand, am sitting here passively, save for the occasional reflexive jerk to prevent my skull from making forceful contact with the dashboard."