[ CW ] A speech to a fundraiser for the arts beginning with the Oscar Wilde quote : `` All art is quite useless . ''

Oscar Wilde once said `` All art is quite useless'' and I must, with all my sincerity, agree with the poet. 
 
 What use is there for art? What use need there be for art? When something is used it becomes a tool to reach a desired goal; a separate and external object with a strictly utilitarian value. 
 
 Art is to be experienced, not used; felt in the most personal of senses, not tasked for external value; to question us and introduce questions to ask of the world around us, not to be bent to our clumsy and shortsighted will. Art finds its value in the existence of itself, and in doing so, in recognizing that existential value, one finds that life's value is likewise in the pure existence and experience of itself. We can see how ambition, ownership, fame, or wealth are fleeting tools that have great use yet little internal value. 
 
 May painters never stop their brushes, and musicians never put away their instruments, and writers never abandon the pen and page for something of use. And may we all take a moment to be, rather than use.
