I'm not sure I agree entirely ...

... An apple is what you do with it. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

But is that all it is?

Obliquely pertinent perhaps is this, from Auden's "Squares and Oblongs":

Two theories of poetry. Poetry as a magical means for inducing desirable emotions and repelling undesirable emotions in oneself and others, or Poetry as a game of knowledge, a bringing to consciousness, by naming them, of emotions and their hidden relationships.

The first view was held by the Greeks, and is now held by MGM, Agit-Prop, and the collective public of the world. They are wrong.

Also this:

... if we try to treat art as magic, we produce, not great works of art, but only dishonest and insufferably earnest and boring Agit-Prop for Christianity, Communism, Free Enterprise or what have you.