In classical music, modern is a relative term. But Philip Glass is a post-modernist icon of those who would abandon as obsolete the neoromantics, the impressionists, the romantics, the classicists, the baroque, and even Gregorian chant. Philip Glass is famous for having done a “Paper Symphony.” Actually done with paper. Akin to what I suggested Glenn Gould had done with human voices late in his career.

Of all genres, I have been most resistant and reactionary in this sphere. I’ve openly liked all manner of contemporary artists, notwithstanding the fact that the good ones become fewer and fewer. Jazz has deteriorated to Kenny G and pissing contests between the ones who are still trying to play, although little of note but the occasional vocalist (Patricia Kaas, say) breaks through even a little. Rock is dead. The growlers and wall of metal nihilists appeal to, uh, libertarians but no one else. The elitists like the Oxbridge geniuses Radiohead (whom I have also conceded to have merit). But they just don’t get the juices jumping, which is the whole point of rock and roll.

American Idol has spent how many years trying to find singers? They can’t find any. (Amy Winehouse and Adele materialize on their own like quarks with half lives of nanoseconds and disappear into the mythology of the 27s.) Just endless — and I do mean endless — Whitney Houston wannabes who compete on ball fields all across America to see how many extra syllables and destructive trills they can introduce into a national anthem they hate but was last played with brilliant hatred by Jimi Hendrix, long dead and buried.

All of the top 100 lists that have been submitted reflect these facts. But no one wants to admit that music itself seems to be dying. Maybe the new kids will break through. Whining solipsistic feminist balladeers. Shocking shockers who still dream they can outdo the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen. They can’t. They’re fakers in ever more elaborate costumes. The last angry rock band was the Clash. The last innovative rock composer and performer was Peter Gabriel. The last folk rock geniuses were Leonard Cohen and Warren Zevon. They’re the key. They had some education and knew what they were talking about on top of their musical and poetic talents. Good luck with that in the age of pop stars whose tweets routinely contain three grammatical errors within the 140 character limit.

So called serious contemporary music is dead. What’s left is pop and a handful of outliers. Pop. A generation dominated by Madonna progressing into Lady Gaga with accelerating speed. Justin Timberlake can sell a million records without a single memorable cut.

Sure, we all listen to some songs we like. I mentioned the outliers. But it’s not an insult to tell the younger ones that it’s not just age we have over them. We have a perspective they may regard as condescending, but it’s a view from a different height.

I do not close my mind to new talent. It’s just getting harder and harder to find. Here’s what I wrote when I discovered I’d been wrong about, gulp, post-modern composer Philip Glass:

INSISTENCE REDUX. I had to comment on the inauguration. I’ve done so. But I want to end the day with something more important and lasting.

Commenters reacted with appreciation for the Philip Glass tour de force, The Hours. I listened to every piece recommended, and I thank everyone who recommended. They were all good, some extraordinary. Yet I found myself coming back to The Hours, which I remind you I found by accident, and in particular the video of its performance.

I keep watching it, and somehow the music, the performer, and the video have become one in my mind, a transcendent gestalt I may never be able to separate into component parts. Sorry. Not trying to be opaque. The music is genius. The pianist is inspired. And the video of this performance is greater than the music or the pianist. It’s a glimpse of perfection.

Why I’m redirecting your attention in the wake of yesterday’s buffoonish celebration of empty self. Watch THIS thing again. And especially all of you who think I don’t understand the unique strengths of womanhood at its best.

You have to watch it full screen in hi-def. That’s when you start to feel her hands. Not young hands. Weathered but not old either. They’ve washed dishes, changed diapers, maybe darned socks, felt for where it hurts with exquisite sensitivity, rushed quivering to the face at awful news, plied the pen to do the books and write the checks, and most likely tended a garden or picked a crop.

We can’t see her face. But we get to hear her heart. Everything has happened to her and nothing will ever make her stop.

We see her in profile. What is the piano? This grand Steinway is no phallic symbol. Its curves are female, its voice mightier than sex. The insistence is not prayer, not mother love, not carnal desire. It’s not even what we call vitality. It’s the ferocity of life as we’re supposed to live it, not in passive appreciation but in the hungry perseverant never ever subsiding passion which fills every hour with the life that IS what we mean when we speak of God.

So I keep looking at her hands. Where the music is coming from. Her frail bent back. Where the power is coming from. And Glass, presumably, is being channeled through her bun.

Regardless, none of this art will ever be brought to you by the collective action sponsored by the government.

All right, maybe I’m a little bit crazy right now. But if I weren’t, I’d be concerned that maybe I’m a little bit crazy in the aftermath of a catastrophic proof that the country as a whole has gone completely batshit crazy.

Persevere nonetheless.

Here endeth my day.

What I wrote a week after the second inauguration of the Post-Modern Sun King.

Am I really impeding the march to greatness of the Millennial Generation? If I were, they could articulate their vision. Please do so.

Believe me. I’m more ready to hear the new and brilliant than you could possibly know.