The first was that "everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't," and therefore you should listen to others and "respect their knowledge".
To be among the first to recognize and articulate an artist's significance leaves an indelible mark not only on a curator's career, but on many people's lives--from the individual artist and their larger community, to everyone who will ever discover and be moved by that work, even after its creator is gone.
He knows the ending in broad strokes as well as the future of the main characters, and will finish the series with bittersweet elements where not everyone will live happily ever after.
The hope in the West is, of course, that once Assad is toppled, the rebels will institute a free and democratic society and everyone will live happily ever after; however, the presence of jihadists fighting alongside the Free Syrian Army indicates that the country could potentially replace secular authoritarianism with theocratic oppression if religious extremism is left unchecked.
Nor was the fact that Dan spent the early years of ours writing an erotic bildungsroman about this nightmare ex-girlfriend, the novel at one point ballooning to 500 pages and including references to everyone he'd ever slept with.
The litany of liquor incanted by the Consul and quoted in Vicky's latest post reminds me of a passage in Geoff Dyer's "Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi": In the bar, waiting to get served, Jeff decided that, following the example of Tracey Emin's Everyone she'd ever slept with tent, if he were an artist he would build a one-to-one scale model of all the booze he'd ever poured down his gullet.
He did the right thing, and everyone will hate him for ever.
Of course, his next comment threw into doubt if the hobby despite everyone's best efforts will ever approach the time when your favorite card was determined by the face on the front, not the jeweler's condition grade given to it, or the price it's going for on eBay.
Alas, here's a reminder that just because a belief is held by basically everyone you can and will ever know doesn't mean it's actually true.
Of course, neither art nor architecture will ever please everyone.
