75 ‘lonely exhaustion’ for so long because you’re trying to wake people up, and you say, “You need to look at this and pay attention to it,” and my bag has been culture lately. Fitts: You are right and you’ve been right. Farrell: We are in danger of losing a high culture. What we have now in this country, at least, is McCulture – fast food versions of culture. We’re even raising a generation now that doesn’t know Bob Dylan. Come on! Fitts: I just want to make sure that they know Bach and I’m not worried about Bob Dylan. Farrell: I’m the same way, but nonethe- less, he did write some very provocative and penetrating poetry. The problem when you’re talking about preserving the high culture or going to lose everything is, I felt as if I was whistling in the wind. I felt like I was some sort of misplaced 18th century stage, but what is interesting about the cavalry that I’ve been noticing lately has been that more and more people are turning on or trying to become aware of that culture – at least musically. I started an experiment about six to seven years ago on my Facebook wall. I would post music, “Oh, this is one of my favorites for the following reasons.” When I started doing that, invariably people would kill the mood. They would post, “This rock group,” or, “That jazz group,” and so forth. Over time, that has completely dropped off. More and more people are saying, “Oh, have you heard this?” Recently, on the community forum on my website I have a new member from Aus- tralia but I won’t mention his name. He posted some music of Jan Dismas Zelen- ka, who is a great baroque master and few people have ever heard of him. Fitts: I hadn’t heard of him. Farrell: I thought, “Wow! This is really cool! Someone else likes this guy.” He may be halfway around the world, but I thought that was really cool. He’s a young guy; he’s not an old curmudgeon. More and more people are getting it at some intuitive level that this art is really important. These are cultural monuments produced by those three pillars that I’ve talked about. Fitts: I don’t know if you are aware of this, but you inspired a new column on The Solari Report. It’s called Food for the Soul. We started it in the 2nd Quarter, and it’s been continuing. It’s a person with an extraordinary back- ground, and because their background is so extraordinary, they are writing anon- ymously. When it comes to culture, this person is fabulous. I knew that they were fabulous before I asked them to write the column, and now that they’ve been writing it, I’m really starting to discover how very well-educat- ed and how very knowledgeable and very world-travelled they are. I said, “Look, what I want you to do is take culture – painting, theatre, movies, anything. Take the entire beat, and I want you to make a recommendation each time.” They have been writing for two months. I said, “I want you to pick something that you think is important and relevant, and write a review.” They’ve been doing it, and it’s fascinat- ing – partly because their perspective is so global and I will give you an example. Two columns ago, they did a review of a sequel of a Chinese movie called Wolf Warrior, and it’s the second sequel. This movie grossed over $800 million in its first month. And are you ready for this? Nobody in America ever heard of it. Maybe you can see it in Chinatown, but no one in this country has ever heard of it. Talk about fake news! Probably, this is going to be one of the largest grossing movies, certainly on its launch and it’s fascinating. When they wrote the review, not only did they review the movie, but they reviewed what is happening in the movie industry. Now you have 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.3 billion Indians. That’s a very large market and a much bigger market than Holly- wood has. Farrell: Speaking of the global culture, one thing that I find interesting is, I some- times go to YouTube looking for organ music or something, and I’ve run across two things that floored me recently. One is the country that is building the most pipe organs now is China. This is not part of their musical culture, but the Chinese attitude is, “We like Bach. We have to hear it on what he wrote this music for. So let’s build organs.” So you see these pipe organs with all of this Chinese artwork in the organ case. It’s beautiful. It’s bizarre to us who are accustomed to a certain look for them, but it’s interesting and intriguing that that instrument would appeal to a culture that has such a profoundly different musical development. The other thing that I noticed is, I went online looking for one of my favorite organ composers that I played for you earlier, and one of the commenters was an Arab, dressed up with typical Arab regalia with the headdress and so on. His comment was, “I just love pipe organs. I just love this stuff.” Fitts: I find that very inspiring. The column is called Food for the Soul. I have to credit you with teaching me this: Our souls do need food. They need nutrition, and we’re not getting nutrition. Farrell: Art is soul food. Whatever your favorite art is – literature, poetry, film, theatre, opera, whatever – it’s soul food. Fitts: We are malnourished. Farrell: Absolutely. We have McCulture, and I call it ‘McCulture’ for a reason. We’re eating the Big Mac of literature and music and art, and you can’t survive on Big Mac’s. It’s not nutritious. I posted a piece by Handel last week, one of my favorite pieces by Handel, Dixit Dominus. This is part of my little exper- iment. In the last seven years I’ve seen things move in a very different direction than I ever expected them to move. One person posted this, “Why can’t we hear music like this anymore? Why is no one writing music like this anymore?”