# Stasis in the Arts?



## 20centrfuge (Apr 13, 2007)

Strange Magic said:


> We're not back in the Middle Ages. We are deep within the New Stasis in the arts, as described by Leonard Meyer mostly definitively in his book _Music, the Arts, and Ideas_. Every sort of trend, movement, school, ideology in the arts is widely available to every and all consumers and participants of and in the arts. Here is a typical Meyerian excerpt:
> 
> "...change and variety are not incompatible with stasis. For stasis, as I intend the term, is not an absence of novelty and change--a total quiescence--but rather the absence of ordered sequential change. Like molecules rushing about haphazardly in a Brownian movement, a culture bustling with activity and change may nevertheless be static. Indeed, insofar as an active, conscious search for new techniques, new forms and materials, and new modes of sensibility (such as have marked our time) precludes the gradual accumulation of changes capable of producing a trend or series of connected mutations, it tends to create a steady-state, though perhaps one that is both vigorous and variegated. In short......a multiplicity of styles in each of the arts, coexisting in a balanced, yet competitive, cultural environment is producing a fluctuating stasis in contemporary culture."
> 
> I can hear the groans from longtime TC members, but Meyer is well worth your time and attention (though often very dense reading).


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