On Indulging in the arts in the face of a recession and global political nightmare

So, when I was younger, I liked to dress up and play Michael Jackson. Music and fun were obviously the center points of my life, I was a kid, I liked instruments, painting, what kids like. As I got older, learned more about the world, things got more political and cut and dry for me. I was an ardent liberal, or as much as you can be when you're young and not super book learned (not that I am now). In my spare time other than school and sports, I still had art and music and eventually my enjoyment of them became extremely abstract. I started to understand conceptual art and music that I had brushed off in my earlier years, but more importantly, I gained a level of detachment from things. I used to thing it was all frivolity - let life be about feeding and clothing people - but if you think about art like abstract mathematics, it's usefulness might be more apparent. Abstract math is something you get your minds involved in, but it's all play, it has nothing to do with reality. Yet, when some physicist comes along and figures out a natural phenomena that it can or does model and suddenly it went from being mental masturbation to the possible answer to a fundamental human question. Same COULD go for art. Mental masturbation but someone figures out some serious life truth in the process - or even simpler, it is all a market farce but because of some added intrinsic/intellectual demand, it lends brains to money matters that would have ever been involved, and maybe that's it;s modern function. Needs more thought.