Cataclysmic Changes (Part 3 of 3)

The following is an excerpt of an exchange between Will and Art on 10 April 2014.

Will:

All good stuff, Art! 

I'm wondering if the turbulent reversal is the Internet...the idea that somehow Arthur is responsible for it because of the Concert for Iceland!  At the same time, I have another vision...that the concert asks that, at its high point, Arthur use his gifts of prophecy and sees nothingness as he looks at Farthington. 

About this part:

And as for Arthur's mental state, I don't think he needs to be a vegetable.  We can nuance that.  My main idea is that his powers were paradoxically released by this sort of outsider meddling.

I totally get that...I think I was writing against myself a little, or at least against the fact that we haven't looked at Arthur's entire life in a while...we've been fixating on the late 70's and pre-comeback stage for so long that I've lost sight a little of the full view.

Art:

Yes, I think that the turbulent reversals is the Internet or at least the new paradigm in which the Internet arises.  It's a similar move to what Judeo-Christian thought pulled on the entire world at its advent: turning the heirarchy on its head, turning the slaves into masters and vice versa.  But remember that Carlton's thought is going to parallel Christianity in a counterfeit way.  He turned the people who have nothing to say into prophets and vice versa.  The artist is like Beowulf in the second part of the 2007 film: he has been supplanted by unctuous, fawning, sycophantic, opportunistic "hollow men," who have no substance or heroism or prophecy or artistry of their own.  In an astonishing reversal, the hero has been rendered irrelevant.

Will:

You're describing Farthington as antichristish...interesting.