Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.  A yellow dressinggown, ungirldled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air.  He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

-- Introibo ad altare Dei.


So this is where it's going.  It'll make sense soon enough, if it doesn't yet.

1904 began as a device, a way to frame an errant mind, a self-imposed system which over time generated its own rules for organizing the rag and bone heap of ideas, memories, the past, faith, passing judgments, opinions, yearnings, hopesfearsdesires.  

That and a lot of other stuff.

As a certain character in Iris Murdoch's "The Black Prince" explains, in the very last lines of the novel,

"Art is not cosy and it is not mocked.  Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters.  It is the light by which human things can be mended.  And after art there is, let me assure you all, nothing."