Thursday, August 2, 2012

Artists are Necessary


Have you ever come to the realization that a theme has been festering in your life?  Not festering-- that's a terrible word.  Incubating.  Thinkubating.  And you haven't purposefully sought out information or perspectives on it, but instead they seem to have come to you because of a great need you never even allowed yourself to acknowledge? 

The theme that seems to be floating toward me on what Emerson would call the "currents of the Universal Being" is the simple idea that art is necessary.  Art is a necessary and vital part of our human experience, and our ability to resist being human when we need to.  The often-excerpted passages from Thoreau's Walden came my way, about us living meanly like ants, the urging to spend our lives observing only realities and thinking, breaking away from the habit, routine and useless gossip of daily life;  Emerson's ideal of finding the unique Genius in our students and guiding them as they meet its needs; Northrup Frye's The Educated Imagination-- read that for the first time in the last year. I read This article about why the market economy model does not work in education, which rests partially on the premise that minds are NOT commodities! And then after that I read Chris Hedges' article about why the subversion of art is essential to democracy, which echoed a poem I had read at the beginning of the school year last year and really liked: Ferlinghetti's Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signalling you through the flames].

The idea that art is necessary to human experience, and also to a thriving democracy, is almost absent from mainstream curriculum mapping and standards-writing.  Whenever art programs are justified, they seem to be justified in terms of their ability to prepare students for the creativity that they may have to use to do their 21st Century job.  Innovation around the conference table.  Or they are justified in terms of their ability to build "basic skills" like math, reading and writing.  Take OMA in Tucson, for example.  I respect their program and their teachers-- they've done WONDERFUL things for my children, but I don't understand why art has to be justified only in terms of basic skills or its ability to generate future income for our students. I mean, I do understand it.  It's about money.  And our public policy, when it comes down to it, is largely money and safety driven. It's almost impossible to explain in a language that can be taken seriously by policymakers how important it is that folks are able to appreciate a well-written poem or novel, or interpret subtleties in a work of independent film, or write those novels, or make those films. And that's too bad. 

I believe the arts (visual arts, performing arts, writing) allow individuals, communities, and humanity as a collective group to, by representing ourselves, to understand ourselves and each other better, and on a level that is, perhaps, spiritual without pertaining at all to religion.  The arts take us both outside of ourselves and into our imaginations, beyond the daily grind, and ask us to consider things a little more slowly, in a way that is not about budgets, mileage or calories.  And goodness knows we all need to slow down a little, or the world will soon spin off its axis.

9 comments:

  1. Good thoughts. Okay, let me dumb this down a bit...

    I'm reading Tom Sawyer right now - a book that was part of our early HS cirriculum - and I'm REALLY loving it. I'm only 15 pages in though, because I repeatedly have to stop and savor Twain's artistry with words. This guy was a frigging genius, which is clearly why he's a big plank in English coursework. Why couldn't I appreciate that as a 14-year old, the book's original intended audience?

    I wish I could time-travel back and be a student in that HS class. All I remember is highlighting and making notes where the teacher told us to, memorizing examples of symbolism, imagery, and themes. Did they ever say: "Mark lines or paragraphs that you find especially creative - that make you smile, or ponder"?

    I'm thinking specifically about a scene I just read. Tom is returning home after a big imaginary war with the neighborhood boys when he sees a new girl and falls in love. Twain's line: "The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot."

    :)

    What if you asked your students to take this scene and re-write it? Have them try to do boring versions, dramatic versions, flowery versions, poetic versions, childish versions, etc? I bet you'd get a few really good ones - and everyone would learn to appreciate the artistry of great creative writers!

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  2. That's a great idea. At the Poetry Center training I attended this summer a teacher brought in a similar exercise.

    I think appreciation of any art form is built out of a lifetime of experiences-- both within the art form and simply _life experiences_. Everything we can do to weave those experiences into children's lives is crucial. But they can't be expected to appreciate everything at 14, I suppose!

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    1. Another line I liked: "Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time which is NOT money."

      Love it!! :)

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    2. Oh... I love Huck Finn. I would adopt him, but I wouldn't want to sivilize him. He has got to be one of my favorite characters in American literature. You are going to re-read that book, too, right? Now, THAT is a work of genius for sure.

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    3. (K-- see below. I should have put that comment in this thread maybe.)

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  3. Kristal-- Don't you think Beatrice and Virgil addressed the role of art and imagination in understanding ourselves/ history... and the helplessness of markets in terms of profitably categorizing/ labeling art? But also,maybe, the limitations of art's ability to undo our complicity in the horrors of mankind.

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  4. I love the term "thinkubating." That's me right now. I have this novel inside me and I'm not sure how to get it out of me. I want it to be good, but I'm not sure how to make it happen.

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    1. Thanks for the compliment.

      Regarding the novel, have you tried NaNoWriMo? It's National Novel Writing month in November. It is the wackiest most liberating month of imaginative work you are ever likely to have. I did it for the first time alongside my students last year. There is a Young Writers Project for it-- the young writers choose their own word count. Three of my students chose the "grown-up" word count of 50,000 words, s I couldn't wimp out. It was complete insanity. I discovered that as of now, I'm not a novelist, but I sure got some ideas onto paper that I wouldn't have. Websites: nanowrimo.org or ywp.nanowrimo.org Check it out-- very supportive community.

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    2. Not to completely self-promote, but you might also like my "modest proposal" about why to eliminate the teaching of poetry from the curriculum: http://amethysthintonsainz.blogspot.com/2012/06/pedagogy-of-poetry-modest-proposal.html

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