In last December's issue of the British magazine Prospect, the musician and producer Brian Eno explained that gone are the days of distinct stylistic trends -- "this season's color" or "Abstract Expressionism" or "psychedelic music."

"Now there are almost as many dividers as there are records," he explained, "and they keep proliferating."

He says there are now so many trends evolving so rapidly that the distinction between cool and uncool doesn't so much matter anymore:

We're living in a stylistic tropics. There's a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don't have the same localized stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It's all alive, all 'now,' in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it's old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

At the top of this post is a picture of Brian, with a cat.