To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.

Something made for other people is measured, at least in part, by whether it reaches them. Calling a work excellent while conceding that almost nobody can receive it quietly moves the failure onto the audience, where it does not belong. Difficulty is sometimes honest, but obscurity is just as often a place to hide thin thinking. The real test is whether the hardness sits in the subject or only in the telling.

Take something you made or explained lately that landed badly. Ask whether the difficulty was necessary, then try saying it again plainly.