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In Leonard Shlain's book, Art & Physics, he proposes that many of the great insights in physics have been preceded by the artistic expression of those same ideas. He pairs visionary artists with revolutionary physicists -- Di Vinci and Newton, Picasso and Einstein, Duchamp and Bohr, among others -- to demonstrate how artists could articulate the way the Western world was seeing itself slightly prior to physicists being able to explain how it thinks about itself. To answer why this occurs, Shlain expands the story into a fourth dimension. It sounds heavy but I've been living in the fifth dimension for some time, so it was like grasping Dr. Seuss for me.

But life in 3-D finds ways to reference Art & Physics a lot. I mean not when I'm arguing a parking ticket at the city courthouse or trying to persuade my daughter (or my boyfriend) to eat green beans. But it comes in handy when I can't remember why I care so much about art in the first place or, more importantly, why anyone else should.

I went to the symphony on Thursday to hear pianist Yundi Li, saw Clark Derbes and Wylie Garcias' show, He said/She Said at PlusOne Gallery on Friday and partook of the red wine at the MOA Young Professionals' Art is Groovy, Baby on Saturday. Many different levels of reality in one weekend, it shook my already slipping identity.

At the symphony I watched the crowd sit patiently and erect, facing the guest performer as he hammered out notes to movements I couldn't recognize. The audience was serene, pale-faced and waited to clap until the very end. It was a little like church; some people fell asleep and others were transfixed. I was neither.

Garcia and Derbes' show was another religious affair, the same devout congregation at yet another service. The artwork was wonderfully uncomfortable, the gallery was pleasingly choked with youthful bodies or youthful minds and the artists were genuinely involved with the attendees. Again, I was floating somewhere else, just watching people absorb their culture.

And then overnight, I found myself at the MOA Young Professional's event, the first I have ever been to (at least to my knowledge, I may have wandered into an art yuppie social hour three martinis deep and just didn't know it at the time). Again, people partnered with those who mirrored their own demographic. Everyone delighted in the music and art; Brad Bourgoyne cranked out dozens of free portraits on canvas and Christian Dior painted Twiggy faces.

By Sunday I was disenchanted, I didn't understand any of it. The same people in the same places. It was me in the same place with the same me. But Sunday was also my best friend's birthday, a bibliophile like none other, and she had Art & Physics sitting on her nightstand. I picked it up and thumbed randomly to the chapter entitled, "I/We."

Without tripping back into that timeless, spaceless quadrant of reality Leonard politely reminded me that regardless of who you are or how you do it, everyone needs the communication that art provides. Everyone is looking for a way to see the world before they can begin to express it in formal terms.

We are all seeking the yet-to-be-verbalized sentiment of our times, and until that reflection is found, it is the same conversation over and over again. But it is worth reiterating as many times as needed until something revolutionary is said.