Poetry is older than writing, and everything people find difficult about it is a fossil of what it was for. Before there were books there were people who had to remember things: genealogies, laws, histories, the route to somewhere, the names of the dead.

Dance is the only art whose instrument dies. That single fact explains almost everything about how it is made, taught, lost and fought over.

Before Hollywood there was Fort Lee. The grammar of film was worked out on the New Jersey side of the Hudson by people solving practical problems, and almost everything you understand instinctively at the cinema is something you were taught.

Theatre is the only art form that cannot be stored. That is not a limitation it has failed to overcome.

“Don’t Touch My Little Sister” is much more than a film in development. It is an ambitious, sensitive cinematic project deeply rooted in Haitian social realities, driven by the vision of director Wegherley Joseph.

Most of the words we use to sort music were invented to sell it. That is worth knowing before you decide what you like.

For most of its history photography had to argue that it was an art at all. That argument is worth revisiting now, because the thing photography was defending has become scarce.