The times are late and get later, not by decades but by years and months, This tempo of change, which in the world of affairs and in the physical sclences makes schemes and data outmoded and irrelevant overnight, presents peculiar and phenomenal difficulties to the making of works, and almost insuperable difficulties to the making of certain kinds of works; as when, for one reason or another, the making of those works has been spread over a number of years, The reason is not far to seek, The artist deals wholly in signs. His signs must be valid, that is valid for him and, normally, for the culture that has made him, But there is a time factor affecting these signs. If a requisite now-ness is not present, the sign, valid in itself, is apt to suffer a kind of invalidation. This presents most complicated problems to the artist working outside a reasonably static culture-phase, These and kindred problems have presented themselves to me with a particular clarity and an increasing acuteness, It may be that the kind of thing I have been trying to make is no longer makeable in the kind of way in which I have tried to make it.

— The anathemata by Jones, David (Page 15)