The human race is endlessly fascinated by the Moon. How its symmetry changes our moods, from the rounded wholeness of a yellow sphere, to the pointed edges of a jagged crescent. And we, at one with our primal instincts, never fail to react.

Artists, singers and poets respond in turn. Blue Moon, Paper Moon and Moon River will ring down the centuries; Moonlight Serenade brought big band style and romance to the most unlikely occasion - the Second World War. Frank Sinatra insisted that his lover "Fly me to the Moon and let me sing among those stars". And sing he did.

For Shakespeare the Moon was "...an arrant thief, her pale fire she snatches from the sun", while the thin crescent moon shines like a jewel in Van Gogh's night skies. Li Bai, the Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty, loved the Moon as much as he loved the wine cup. So much so that he met his end in the Yangtze, drowning in a drunken attempt to embrace the Moon's reflection. What a way to go....

But though we paint it, sing about it, read about it and write poems about it, are we sometimes forgetting to look at it? Walking across open parkland one night last week, a full moon stopped me in my tracks. This perfect, sombre yellow disc is the one thing every human being can gaze on, and not even the sun can claim that honour. Surely it is marvellous, I reflected, that under this same moon Shakespeare composed sonnets, Van Gogh raved and raged in his final madness, and Li Bai sat with his shadow and his wine cup, slurring poetry at the black night?

However, two minutes later the vision had faded as I turned into the high street. The Moon had disappeared, banished by tall buildings and street lights, shouted down by the roar of taxis and buses. People bustled in and out of bars and restaurants, loitered at bus stops. No-one looked up. The Moon was dead.

Forty years ago the Americans landed on the Moon. Just for one day, the world put down its tools and its weapons, stopped whatever it was doing, and huddled round radios waiting for news from the skies. The ultimate peaceful competition, the Space Race, was over, and the winner had been declared. For once, and only once, inter-group hostilities were suspended and the human race became one single group, with one of its kind walking the Moon. We were, briefly, united - there was hope for a new dawn of peaceful cooperation.

Of course this state of affairs did not endure - we soon lowered our gaze, lost the new perspective and forgot the space dreams. Petty jealousies, rivalries, the urge to fracture into small groups, the bloodlust of war, have continued unabated. The new dawn of 1969 has been eclipsed by a bad moon.

Somerset Maugham's novel The Moon and Sixpence is based on the life of Gauguin. In the book the central character - Strickland - throws up his job as a stockbroker and becomes a painter in Tahiti. The Moon in this sense is the pursuit of Art and Beauty, while the Sixpence represents everyday life and human relations.

Chasing the Moon comes at a cost for Strickland - he abandons his family, and he eventually dies of leprosy in Tahiti. The message, though, is clear. We'll soon run into trouble if we wander down the high street, ignoring the sixpence at our feet. But just so often, every now and then, we need to look up to the skies, and remember the Moon.