That’s how the stain works. The biography colors the song, which colors the sunny moment of the diner. We don’t decide that coloration is going to happen. We don’t get to make decisions about the stain. It’s already too late. It touches everything. Our understanding of the work has taken on a new color, whether we like it or not.

The tainting of the work is less a question of philosophical decision-making than it is a question of pragmatism, or plain reality. That’s why the stain makes such a powerful metaphor: its suddenness, its permanence, and above all its inexorable realness. The stain is simply something that happens. The stain is not a choice. The stain is not a decision we make.

Indelibility is not voluntary.

When someone says we ought to separate the art from the artist, they’re saying: Remove the stain. Let the work be unstained. But that’s not how stains work.

We watch the glass fall to the floor; we don’t get to decide whether the wine will spread across the carpet.