I’ve heard that almost all the people crowding around the big art openings barely look at the work on display and are just there to hobnob. Nothing wrong with that, except that none of them ever come back to look at the art – but they will tell everyone, and actually believe, that they have seen the exhibition.

One of the things that’s so chilling about that kid is he’s pretty smart, and he has capacity to observe adult hypocrisy, which is pretty common to smart adolescents. I think that’s one of the hard parts about being a teenager is you’re just old enough to see all the holes in the adult world around you. But you’re growing up anyway. And you’re not old enough to have any positive substitute, so it’s very bleak. So you don’t feel powerful enough to create an alternative reality, but you’re smart enough to see there’s so much wrong with the world your parents have created that you’re not eager to participate, you don’t want to join. It’s what makes adolescents so apocalyptic.