The point is,” Sid Morris says. “This. Now. Paint on your brush, wind at your back, my crappy studio. This is the only certainty. Here: your sensations; your body existing for its moment in time. Everything else is crap.

In the background, classical music plays from a paint-splattered radio, the New York station with the ancient announcer more frequently heard in doctors’ waiting rooms and other places where signs prohibit the use of cell phones – the last bastions of Beethoven or Chopin or, on racier days, Shostakovich.

I've wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations - the atmospheric pressure, you might say - of what it is to be seriously a long-term prisoner in an American prison.

Sensations sweet,Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart.

The basic unit for contemporary art is not the idea, but the analysis of and extension of sensations.

We need to give ourselves permission to act out our dreams and visions, not look for more sensations, more phenomena, but live our strongest dreams - even if it takes a lifetime.