The simultaneity of presence in the moment and distance from the world is the site of art. The meditative and religiously coloured experience of the now, this tremendous concentration on the moment, which triggers enormous waves of feelings of connectedness with the world, and perhaps says nothing more than ‘I exist’, is only possible if the world becomes visible as the world and not as the world of the self, and it does so only when that self is outside of it. In one and the same movement, art takes us out of the world and brings us closer to it.
— Knausgaard, The America of the Soul
Notes from a Room 