I'm Being Followed

In my email this morning: "AmericanTheatre Wing (TheWing) is now following your updates on Twitter."

I suspect that TCG has put a contract out on me, and TheWing (TheWing???) has gotten the job. If I suddenly disappear, you all know where to look.

Don's Right (Yes, You Read That Correctly)

When all is said and done, Don and I are in agreement about the central point of Don's latest couple points: "I'm not saying that the mere presence of money mucks things up. It's when the primary motivation for the creation of the art is to make money. That's when that slippery slope that leads to rampant mediocrity and shallow horseshit theater gets all slidey." I agree entirely.

Furthermore, like Don, I would extend this to non-arts jobs as well: "Here's a clue - don't take the job because of how much money it pays you. Take the job that you want. Find a job that seems like it will be challenging, fulfilling and pays you some kind of wage and then work hard to do it well. If you take a job because it gives you benefits (and that that is the main reason to take the job) then all you will end up having is benefits." Nicely said.

I even agree with him -- brace yourself -- that art is not a job: "The quality and value of a work of art has absolutely nothing to do with the economic status of the artist and everything to do with the honest endeavor to create something new and personal to share with the world."

I know you're all think I'm saying this to lull Don into a false sense of security so I can bash him in the nuts, but I'm not. Oh, sure, I don't buy his analogies, whether prostitution or poker, but life is too short for arguing about analogies and metaphors. What's most important is the central idea: art is an end in itself, not a means to something else, whether that something else is fame (yeesh) or wealth or whatever.

Don isn't saying, nor am I, that you shouldn't get paid for your work, or that your art isn't worth anything. What we're both saying, I think, is that once you start thinking about your "career" and "putting food on the table," you are thinking instrumentally, and you're starting to lose your way.

This isn't about purity, it is about focus and priorities. And perspective.

I'm going to go a step further -- although I think Don would agree with this, and may have himself said something similar in the past -- and say that I don't think it is a particularly good idea when artists make their entire living from their art. I think non-arts jobs keep artists in touch with the regular, non-artistic world and with regular, non-artistic people who they need to understand in order to create things that illuminate their reality. Oh, sure, there are artists whose total focus is on their own inner world, and whose ability and willingness to communicate with the world is negligible, and those artists will do what they do regardless of what people say. They need a different way of living, one either based in independent wealth, or extremely spartan. But aside from those outliers, I believe most artists benefit from keeping a foot in the quotidian.

Does that cut into their available time for artmaking? Of course it does. But when all is said and done, how much time can anyone spend making art nonstop. The creative imagination needs some rest, some time for processing things unconsciously, some new experiences to serve as raw material. But Don's right: choose the job carefully, so it doesn't deaden and abuse your soul, but rather enhances it.

Another step, this one I doubt Don will follow me on, but I could be surprised: I think artists need to give back. I know that in many ways the art that they create is a gift in itself, and I agree with that. But I think they need to share their talents with others. This might be teaching, or mentoring, or working in a school, or being a Big Brother or Big Sister, or volunteering at a neighborhood center or a nursing home, or any number of things where an artist can share the richness that is in their soul. This is another way of spreading the wonder of the arts, and is another way for the artist to add to their rootedness in reality. If at all possible, the focus of this contribution should be on helping other people connect with their own creativity, help them identify the meaningfulness of their lives, tell their own stories, share their own richness. In other words, it shouldn't be about the artist, but rather about others.

It would help enormously if Obama could create a program for universal health care -- the effect on artists of that single change in their lives would release more creativity than any increase in NEA funding could ever do. This isn't a pre-req for what I am saying above, just something that would help it to happen more easily. Nevertheless, the basic message Don is communicating is good advice: keep your eye on the ball.

Tom Loughlin On a Roll

Tom Loughlin at Poor Player has been writing some thought-provoking posts recently, and I hope to respond to one or two as soon as I can think carefully enough to meet Tom's level of reflection. But in case you haven't seen, them, here are the links.

http://poorplayer.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/why-i-teach/
http://poorplayer.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/what-i-teach/
http://poorplayer.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/tyranny-of-dead-ideas-theatre-edition/
http://poorplayer.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/my-mfa/
http://poorplayer.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/the-critical-mind/

I am also very excited to say that Tom and I will be pairing up at the Southeastern Theatre Conference in Birmingham AL on Friday March 6th to present a panel and discussion entitled ""What Are We DOING? Rethinking the College Theatre Major." The more Tom writes, the more I look forward to finally getting a chance to meet him!

On Prostitution, Art, and Other Absurdities

I'd like to say there is an interesting conversation going on at Angry White Guy between Don Hall and Adam Thurman, but I can't. I could say there is an energetic argument, full of sound and fury, but...well, you know the rest of the quotation. And the fault lies with Don, I'm afraid. Now, my inner Camille Paglia loves Don's melodramatic style. It's clear, it's strong, and it is a lively read. But my inner Descarte rebels. If I have my crap detector turned on at even the lowest setting, it starts going off almost instantaneously.

Let's start with Don't analogy: theatre is like a brothel. This one, which bookends his "theatre is like poker" analogy of several months back, is something we've been dealing with since St. Augustine turned against the theatre a little over 1600 years ago, taking the Catholic Church (and later the Protestant Church) with him down the anti-theatrical road. Don does a great job rehashing that argument:

"Prostitutes sell themselves - their bodies and their submission - to the person who will pay them to perform. Theater artists put themselves on display and display themselves - their bodes, ideals, ideas, and submission - for cash. Not that difficult to grasp."

At the risk of pedantry, let me just point out that this isn't true. Prostitutes do not sell their bodies, they rent their bodies. It's a limited-time offer. One might argue that selling your body and submission wouldn't be prostitution, but rather marriage, which is another institution entirely. It is the temporary nature of the transaction that has always landed prostitutes in hot water. So let's get our definitions straight.
With that out of the way, the fact is that anyone who is a wage laborer -- which is pretty much most of us -- rents their bodies and their submission in exchange for money. Not just artists, but cab drivers, longshoremen, college professors, and even lowly NPR employees. One might argue that prostitutes pretend that they like you and want to do what you want to do...but that's what we do as employees, too. Nope, it's just hard to get the definition of prostitution that Don offers to reduce down to something that pertains only to whores and artists. Unless the issue is that whole "display" thing, which was a big part of it for medieval and Puritan anti-theatrical writers, as well as some Islamic justification for certain rules about dress for women. So if Don's issue is "display of the body," would that leave off, say, radio drama? Or what about film, which is really the display of shadows of bodies who did something in the past? Or what about, say, the performers in Beckett's Play, who are disembodied except for their heads? Man, this is getting harder and harder.
The discussion continues:

Adam: "The idea that art is so damn fragile that if it gets near anything that smells "business related" it will lose it's luster is a product of childish and immature thinking."

Don: It's as old as the Bible, brother. Money corrupts the process. It ain't the art that is fragile. It's the artist.

This is the 1 Timothy 6:10 argument. Let's take a look at that Biblical passage upon which Don is basing his economic theory: "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." Hmmmm. So it isn't money that "corrupts," but rather the love of money, coveting, "to desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others," in other words the excessive and wrongful hankering after money, which has caused some people to abandon their faith and, as a result, suffer pain. In Don's usage, read for "faith" the word "art," and maybe we're on to something. The artist is fragile, so saith Don -- he or she is easily tempted away from straight-and-narrow pathway of art by the love of money. When they sell their ideals for money, then they have sold their souls, strayed from their faith, and are cruisin' for a bruisin'. So preachest Reverend Hall.
But the Biblical injunction is against excessiveness. Like most classical philosophy, it is all about moderation in all things. One suspects that excessiveness has led a lot of people, artists or otherwise, down the forbidden pathway. For instance, excessive love of sex might just as easily lead one astray, or the excessive love of alcohol or drugs, or gambling, or...Facebook! Does Don recommend that artists equally avoid all these things (no! not Facebook!)? Or does he see, say, having sex with one's wife or husband as something that condemns the artist to corruption? Perdition on my soul, what are we to do?
The point is that it is the love of money, not money itself, that is the root of all evil. It is an overvaluing of money, placing it above all other things, that corrupts. It is arguable whether artists are "fragile" in this regard, or more fragile than anyone else who makes a living and puts food on the table. I doubt that most of us are making deep moral compromises in order to pay the rent, but maybe Don lives in a different world than I do and they ask him to do horrible stuff at NPR. When I look at the people who are doing theatre that some of us might find less than exemplary, I suspect that most of them have not, in fact, sold their soul, but rather either have a preference for that kind of theatre (yes, that IS possible), or have no preference about what they do as long as it is theatre. We all make choices, and Don's belief that all temptations should be removed lest artists stray smacks of paternalism bordering on puritanism. Artistic Amish-ness (Amish-itude?). I'd say we don't need anyone to protect our artistic soul for us. Some saint, quoted I believe in Herbert Blau's The Impossible Theatre, says something to the effect that she prays better when her stomach isn't empty. I suspect artists feel the same, and the the cost of doing so is not soul destroying.
Frankly, this discussion of Art versus Money, especially framed in simplistic terms like prostitution and instant corruption, creates a lot of heat and not much light. It takes a complex question about the relation of money and values and turns it into an all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil melodrama. Yes, some Big Institutions put Money ahead of Art; some Little Guys do the same. Money is not an economic Tar Baby that, once touched, leads directly to destruction. It is a complicated tool for living in this world that requires the development of deeply held principles to manage the balance, not the spartan rejection of all things monetary in the interest of some artistic virginity, pure as the driven snow. Don proposes an economic chastity belt. The choice is not between artistic Madonna or Whore, an opposition that has proven itself as absurd when it comes to women as it would in relation to art.
What needs to happen -- and this is why I am a strong proponent of arts education that intellectual content and not just how-to skill development -- is that young artists need to be explicitly and repeatedly required to develop a thorough philosophy of what they will and won't do for their art -- an artistic creed, if you will -- that can serve as a touchstone for later decisions that touch on artistic and economic integrity. That way, they can make thoughtful decisions in the moment, because they will have thought through what they stand for.
But I've always been in favor of education over abstinence.

It's Not About You

I'm a fan of Daniel H. Pink. I think his book A Whole New Mind was inspiring and fascinating, and created a vocabulary that could be used in discussions from education to business to the arts.

Later, I was invited to listen in on a webcast with Pink about his latest book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need, a book done in Manga comic book style that gives six principles for young people trying to find their way in the post-college world of work. As someone who teaches said young people, my curiosity was piqued, so I grabbed a copy when it came into our university library.

It is Rule Number 3 that I'd like to discuss tonight, because it applies to our previous discussion about how to garner legislative support for increased arts funding. But I also would propose that it is a rule, if embraced by the arts community, that would change the face of the arts in significant ways and raise them in the esteem of their fellow citizens. It might even lead to a New Renaissance. Rule #3 is: It's Not About You.

Our hero, Johnny Bunko, is stuck in a boring job he took because he followed his father's advice to major in something secure in college rather than following what he was most passionate about. One night, wallowing in despair as he works an all-nighter, he cracks open a pair of chopsticks which releases a savvy and sarcastic genie named Diana who says she is here to teach him how not to screw up his life. The first two principles -- "There is no plan" and "Focus on strengths, not weaknesses," have led our hero to make a mess of things by arrogantly focusing so much on his own "special genius" that he is about to screw up a big opportunity. Diana bursts on the scene to set him straight. The dialogue in the comic reads as follows:

Diana: It's not about you.
Johnny: But last week you said...
Diana: Read my lips, numb-nuts! It's not about you. It's about your customer, it's about your client. Use your strengths, yes, but remember... You're here to serve -- not to self-actualize...
Johnny: So I don't matter at all?
Diana: Of course you matter, but the most succesful people improve their own lives by impriving others' lives. They help their customer solve its problem. They give their client something it didn't know it was missing. That's where they focus their energy, talent, and brainpower.
Johnny: Outward, not inward.
Diana: Exactly...Sp pull your head out of your...ego.

Artists are not admired in our culture. Oh, sure, if you're a celebrity, you get oohed and aahed over, and even allowed to comment on political issues every once in a while if you'll help a politican draw a crowd, but for the most part the average Joe thinks artists are self-absorbed, arrogant con men who try to pass off incomprehensible nonsense as profound works of art. They don't buy the idea, so common in discussions about the nonsensical question "What is art?," that it's art if the artist says its art. They don't know why they should work at a job while artists spend all their time daydreaming and farting around.

Now, you know that that image isn't true, and I know that that image isn't true, but the reason that they don't know is two-fold: 1) they don't know any artists, because artists huddle together in what amounts to spiritually gated communities populated only by other artists, and 2) because whenever artists are asked why public money ought to be used to support art, artists talk only about themselves -- about their self-expression, their oh-so-personal vision, the purity of their integrity. And then they offer a few kumbaya generalities about how the arts are "good for" everybody everywhere and ask for a check. Once they get the check, they use it to create art that thumbs its nose at those who gave the money in the first place. It's a performance that wears thin real quickly, and after about three decades our elected leaders decided, in the 1990s, to stop taking it anymore. We've been trying to recover ever since.

It's not about you. That doesn't mean "You're here to take orders." Rather, it means you are a conduit, a limen like a doorway between the imaginative realm and the concrete realm. Artists are like shamans or mediums who, through long training and painful experience, have learned to open themselves to the ineffable and are able to part the curtain that separates the unseen from the day-to-day.

Over time, life develops through repeated exposure a film that dulls experience. It is like a scrim slowly falls between us and those things in life that we see on a daily basis. Artists raise that scrim, so that we see it once again in all its vividness. That's what Shklovsky meant when he said that art "helps us recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony." That is an amazing gift, a wonderful thing to be able to do. But it is something that is done for others. As an artist, you must experience that stones stoniness yourself, but you must also be focused on transferring that experience to others. Otherwise, you become the same as somebody who is on a really cool LSD trip in the middle of a roomful of stone cold sober people; we don't really care about all the revelations you've found in your thumbprint -- unless you figure out a way to communicate it.

For much of art history, artists considered themselves to be craftsmen doing a job; many didn't sign their work. They knew it wasn't about them. Artistically, as Pink writes, they "give their client something it didn't know it was missing." They give a gift. Which brings us back to Lewis Hyde again, and the difference between a gift economy and a transaction economy. One of the many subtitles Hyde seems to have used for different editions of this book is "How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World." The artist is the conduit, the vessel for the creative spirit. The artist is a midwife that brings into existence a new life.

I am a teacher, and one of the hardest things for a teacher to realize is that it's not about me. It's not about my brilliance, it's not about my insight, it's not about my rhetorical skills or my ability to create really scary tests. It's about the student, and what the student learns to care about. Once I learned that lesson, teaching became much, much harder because I had to pay attention to what my students were saying, thinking, observing. I had to interact, not just expound. It's not about me.

If artists could adopt this attitude of humbleness and humility before their art and before their audience; if they could give gifts rather than participate in exchange; if they could allow themselves to be transparent to trascendence, as Joseph Campbell was fonding of saying. Well, I suspect that the artist wouldn't be regarded with so much suspicion and disdain, but rather would be embraced by the community.

Everyone loves to receive a gift, and gifts are about the receiver, not the giver.

Tony Gets It

Over at Tony Adams blog, he writes about the way we need to frame the debate about arts funding, and the need to shift the focus from the artist to the public. Hear! Hear! He concludes:

My father hates the government. He will never be supportive of public funding for the arts. If he was to learn that the Piss Christ is not actually representative of most of what is actually being done, he wouldn't tell others not to support the arts. And if there was something nearby for him to see, he's probably actually go.

If there were more artistic events to attend in Cisco, Texas, not only would Patty, my mom, probably go--dragging along my stepfather and step-sister Candace--but she could also probably be swayed to call her congressman to support the arts more.

My stepfather Pat has seen three plays in his life. He liked all three. All three were in Chicago. They live in Texas. If there were plays for them to see that didn't require driving for two hours and paying outrageous ticket prices, they would attend regularly.

We need to shift the debate away from why arts funding matters to arts organizations and artists. We need to talk not about why arts funding matters to artists, but why it matters to Chuck and Lynn, why it matters to Pat and Patty.

And I will append that the best way to make sure there are more artistic events in Cisco Texas is NOT (or at least, not ONLY) to bring in a touring show from Houston, but to support some artists who actually live in Cisco so that Pat and Patty actually KNOW some artists, and thus KNOW that they are people just like them. This is such a simple concept -- why is it so hard to get it through people's heads???

A Common Misconception

Over at The Nonprofiteer, erstwhile kellynfp has "Second (and third) thoughts about public funding of the arts." Apparently, she spent an evening in my old home town of Bloomington IL watching a touring production by the dance company Ailey II when she had an epiphany:

Of course you’re indifferent to public funding for the arts, you dodo; you live in Chicago, where major performers and exhibitions will show up anyway. Public funding for the arts isn’t for Chicago–it’s for Bloomington.

And she remembered growing up in Baltimore, which is not a small town but which waited for months between visits of major dance companies; and she remembered the thrill of seeing those dance companies for the first time. And she realized (0r remembered) that that’s the real point of public funding for the arts: to make available to everyone the thrill of exposure to first-rate art. Everyone: that means people who live in Bloomington, and International Falls, and Arroyo Hondo, even though the free market would not support a stop in any of those places by the latest tour from the Joffrey or the Royal Shakespeare Company or the Met.

As much as I would like to applaud this particular lightbulb, I can't with great enthusiasm, because it is based on a common misconception: that what is needed is arts funding to bring the artists from the Big City to visit, cultural ambassador-like, the poor unwashed citizens of the cultural wasteland. While that's all well and good, and I have attended my share of such touring performances both in Bloomington and in Asheville, I would argue that this is exactly what is NOT needed from arts funding. What is needed is for their to be money available to develop and support artists in communities across America, artists who live in those communities, are committed to those communities, whose work is in dialogue with those communities, and whose artists are part of the fabric of those communities. Don't think the Peace Corp, think Grameen Bank.

Those of us across America are tired of Big City paternalism. All we want is our fair share of the pie.