no, it ain't the truth.  witness that despite the bald assertion that even debating it is absurd, blackhearted is now up to his neck in precisely the same discussion that the rest of us have previously managed to have without throwing out malarkey such as that.  here's a thought:  if you think a discussion is absurd, don't participate.  i'm gonna stay out of this turn of the debate because it's just the same old stuff that i've heard a million times over (which doesn't imbue it with any more insight or truth).  it's hard to have a good discussion in forums that digs a little deeper, and i appreciate that several of you hung in here this long and tried to look at things from different points of view.  that was really interesting.

Bobasaur, you tried to define art as:
Self expression through some medium that is separate and distinct from the artist. (includes visual arts, sculpture, writing, music etc.)

why separate and distinct from the artist?  what about dance?  singing, for that matter?  spoken poetry?  acting?

and does "self expression" relate only to things intrinsic to the artist's personality (which is how i normally interpret that term)?  for me there is more to it than that -- i am almost more interested in expressing things that aren't part of me at all, but that affect me in some way.  are my ideas about the world still categorizable as "self expression"?