It turns out this is a program of American Music Festivals, a once Chicago and now I guess Hawaii based organization. The organization was founded in Chicago and created project based ensembles to perform cultural exchange concerts in Russia and Eastern Europe in addition to the Chicago area. Apparently this was accomplished by contracting freelance Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians.

American Music Festivals is run by a husband and wife, artistic director and executive director team. When she was offered a job at a school on the Big Island of Hawaii, they moved their operations to that state. Their intention is to utilize Honolulu Symphony musicians to increase the size of their projects from their current 12 piece string ensemble up to full symphony size.

They aren’t looking to replace the Honolulu Symphony at all. If the symphony is revitalized, they envision themselves complementing its outreach efforts. Much of their interest is in local and international outreach. Their plan is to institute cultural exchanges with Japan and perhaps other Asian countries. They hope to bring Hawaiian music to Japan and add the music to their existing exchanges in Eastern Europe.

What interested me about the interview was the concept of how technology, transportation and communications allows endeavors like this to be so mobile. Where they live seems to have little bearing on whether they can accomplish their goals.

Of course, part of this is due to the fact their organization has no fixed orchestra. When asked whether he might one day want to establish an orchestra with regular salaried members, Artistic Director Philip Simmons said, “Why would I want to do that though? Why would I want to create all those problems for myself?” The organization focuses on project driven events which provides them with the flexibility to do different things with a variety of groups locally and worldwide.

Simmons suggests that maybe the old models and formulas for a concert experience aren’t working anymore. He doesn’t say his structure is necessarily the new way, but offers it as an alternative.

Given that the Honolulu Symphony has talked about operating with a much reduced ensemble, perhaps a collaboration between them and the Orchestra of the Hawaiian Islands (OHI) can bring enough funding together to assemble the numbers the Honolulu Symphony had performing for them in the past. They wouldn’t necessarily be competing for the same funding pot. The OHI is serving an area of the state the Honolulu Symphony once did but really hasn’t had the funding to do so in recent past. OHI may be able to gain funding from people interested in supporting local performances.

There are some amusing anecdotes like Wagner being hissed at for applauding his Parsifal. But for the most part it is a tale of the gradual socialization of people away from their impulses and how this conflicted state manifests. Ross notes the very week an interview appeared in which Arthur Rubenstein said “It’s barbaric to tell people it is uncivilized to applaud something you like,” Rubenstein hushed an audience who started clapping after the first movements of Mozart concertos.

The history of how these attitudes developed over time is actually really interesting. I was intrigued by Ross’ citation of how “the entry for “applause” in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1910-11) observes: “The reverential spirit which abolished applause in church has tended to spread to the theatre and the concert-room, largely under the influence of the quasi-religious atmosphere of the Wagner performances at Baireuth.” Perhaps this is another reason religion and theater have so many similarities.

Ultimately, I would prefer to be in that place one often is when reading history where you wonder at the strange practices of your forebearers, rather than wondering how the practice has endured so long. Though Ross says there has always been resistance:

“In 1927, a letter to the New York Times mocked the practice: “See, I not only have my big orchestra well in hand, but I can also, by a mere gesture, control a manifold larger audience!” The composer and commentator Daniel Gregory Mason sardonically wrote, “After the Funeral March of the Eroica, someone suggested, Mr. Stokowski might at least have pressed a button to inform the audience by (noiseless) illuminated sign: ‘You may now cross the other leg.’”

Of course, Ross acknowledges that absence of sound is as important to some musical compositions as the music is. He notes Beethoven’s Ninth needs silence prior to beginning to create the required atmosphere. But early on in his speech, he submits that not all compositions have the same needs. Some works hint at and even demand applause of the audience.

“Indeed, in my view, the chief limitation of the classical ritual is its prescriptive quality; it supposes that all great works of music are essentially the same, that they can be placed upon a pedestal of a certain shape. What I would like to see is a more flexible approach, so that the nature of the work itself dictates the nature of the presentation—and, by extension, the nature of the response.”

Ross offers many suggestions about what is to be done, but it is his last paragraph that really caught me (my emphasis)

“I dream of the concert hall becoming a more vital, unpredictable environment, fully in thrall to the composers who mapped our musical landscapes and the performers who populate them. The great paradox of modern musical life, whether in the classical or pop arena, is that we both worship our idols and, in a way, straitjacket them. We consign them to cruelly specific roles: a certain rock band is expected to loosen us up, a certain composer is expected to ennoble us. Ah, Mozart; yeah, rock and roll. But what if a rock band wants to make us think and a composer wants to make us dance? Music should be a place where our expectations are shattered.”

When I read this last week, I intended to make this my Monday entry. However, upon seeing the Kenny Endo performance I described yesterday, I knew I had to talk about that experience as a prelude to this entry.

I thought about all the 10,000+ hours of practice rule that Endo and Semba had adhered to in order to attain their current level of mastery. I was thinking that Semba’s kabuki debut at 10 years old really wasn’t too much different than the route many symphony musicians have taken. They start working on their instruments as children and have thousands of hours under their belts by adulthood. And their reward is being straitjacketed into the role that Ross describes here.

Perhaps it is just a stereotype of Japanese culture that I am operating under. But I imagine Semba’s father might have been very concerned about his son possibly abandoning or at least not living up to the quality expected of the family that founded a famous music school when he began to seriously pursue playing Western music. Obviously, the son earned his master’s license, (Semba is his name achieved upon mastery, his real name is Takahashi), but part of me wonders if the father was always as accepting as the son says he was. Regardless, he is having a ball exhibiting his mastery in both classical and contemporary musical forms on two different sets of percussion instruments.

I have, however, been around enough to know that musicians are bound by expectations as strong as those I am, perhaps incorrectly, attributing to Semba’s family. I have heard stories of guys who would play with an orchestra then walk out the back door and do a club gig. How many bass students today are advised to spend the summers playing jazz or blues so that they build a deep base of alternative techniques and how to improvise over the years? And how many of them are told if they don’t practice or attend a summer conservatory they will never be good enough to get a spot playing music that even Presidents of the United States need to have clapping coaches to attend?

My experience this weekend got me thinking. If we are going to start kids on the 10,000 step path to mastery, they should be able to wow people in the broadest spectrum of music possible. Part of this is selfish on my part because I really think a lot of the pop music today stinks to high heaven. There are only so many orchestra slots available and I have read that the margin of difference between the person who gets in and those that don’t is pretty slim. I figure if those that don’t make it can play other genres of music, they will supplant a good portion of the flash in the pan acts we got these days and even the music for the lowest common denominator won’t be half bad.

I had a similar experience this past weekend with a taiko drumming show we were presenting. Except this time, I really had not anticipated the quality of the performance and was completely taken aback by the experience.

Kenny Endo was the first non-Japanese national to be granted a natori, or master’s name and license in classical Japanese drumming. A visit that was intended to be about a year turned into a 10 year pursuit of master status. In about a month he will be having his 35th anniversary as a taiko performer.

He was performing a retrospective of his masterworks elsewhere in the state under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Arts’ American Masterpieces initiative. Since a lot of effort was going into bringing this event together, I was asked if we wanted to present it as well. We have been trying to arrange for Kenny to perform for awhile but could never find the right time. I was pleased then that we did have an opening for an event in which his infrequently seen works would be performed.

Kenny Endo is really a very influential person in the taiko in the U.S. and well regarded internationally. When I was searching YouTube for video of his work, I often came across people who were performing his compositions. What I didn’t know was much about the other people he was bringing with him. His NYC based bamboo flautist, Kaoru Watanabe, I had seen in many videos with him, but that was about it. The drummer he was bringing over from Japan, Kiyohiko Semba and his violinist wife were a complete mystery to me.

I guess I should have gotten a clue from the fact Kenny continually referred to Semba as if he were a partner in the show that he was something special.

Let me take a little detour to talk about the interesting symmetry between Endo and Semba. Endo grew up always interested in percussion and studied classical drumming and jazz-fusion traps before becoming enamored of taiko and ending up in Japan. Semba came from a family that founded a famous school of Japanese music. He started studying tsuzumi and taiko drumming at age three and made his kabuki stage debut at 10. In high school, he became entranced by bossa nova rhythms and began studying western drums. He noted in an interview that given his family’s strong traditions, he had to balance his practice of western music with familial respect and the study of classical Japanese music.

So we were doing this show with a Japanese-American playing taiko drums and a Japanese national playing a Western drum kit. As you might imagine, the show wasn’t entirely comprised traditional taiko compositions. There were percussion influences from all around the world including Brazilian and Hawaiian, woven in with classical and contemporary Japanese.

Let me tell you, Semba was incredible. You have this little quiet unassuming guy walking around and you have no clue what genius lurks beneath. I employ no hyperbole when I say a lot of rock and roll drummers are lucky he isn’t auditioning for rock bands because he would leave them in the dust. That might be embarrassing because Semba is probably in his late 60s or early 70s. For a time there I forgot I wasn’t watching a rock show because he was going full throttle so much of the time.

He also had an impish sense of humor. The second part of Endo’s “Symmetrical Soundscapes” has two drummers center stage improvising on a set of drums. There is video of it on YouTube—except they don’t include Semba and he brings an entirely new flavor to the work. Semba and Endo moved down to the set that had been wheeled out center stage and Semba suddenly reclines on the floor stage right and begins matching Endo’s patterns on a hand held drum. He gets up and moves center stage and they play on the set—but then Semba grabs the frame supporting the drums and starts moving around the stage forcing Endo to chase after him. They then engage in pulling and pushing the drum set toward and away from each other, spinning it back and forth, until Semba finally pushes it off stage.

Semba moves back across the stage bent over wearily tapping out some half hearted rhythms on the floor and you are thinking this guy must have worn himself out. Then he springs up on the drum riser and just starts going at it all over again.

And you realize all that playfulness wasn’t a lot of spectacle to spice up an uninteresting show or to divert attention from a lack of talent, but rather proof of Endo and Semba’s skill to go through an unrehearsed bit, (that didn’t happen in rehearsals), without missing a literal beat. As I said last year when I talked about the India Jazz Suites, it was an exhibition of joyful exuberance by two masters who took great pleasure in their mutual friendship.

There are a lot of people out there who are seeking the quick path to fame and many who make a lot of money at it. Endo and Semba may not be as financially successful, but the gulf between their ability and that of those who haven’t pursued mastery is quickly apparent.

With all this talk of the principals, I am not doing justice to the other performers like Semba’s wife, Kaori Takahashi, who is really a excellent violinist and shares a bit of her husband’s whimsical nature. And Kaoru Watanabe, who is a superb bamboo flautist himself. Watanabe actually set out on the long road to mastery and apprenticed with the drumming group Kodo, for the traditionally arduous apprentice experience so he is no slouch on the drums either. I spoke with him after the performance and he commented that he usually injects a bit of humor into his shows, but as with many things, Semba eclipses him.

It is really a pity that more venues didn’t get a chance to take advantage of this collaboration. But with that in mind, since the group has so recently practiced and Kenny said he hoped it wouldn’t be too many more years before he got to perform the works again, I am making a rare appeal for people to contact them and book the performance. You won’t be disappointed with the quality of the show, I assure you. If you are looking for some outreach/educational services, Kenny is really top notch at these things. He also has a lot of experience integrating other performance groups into his concerts (or himself into theirs, as the case may be.)

As you might imagine from the source, the article is about motivating college men to volunteer more frequently and is a result of a $600,000 grant to study the issue on 14 campuses. However, one of scholars quoted near the end of the piece suggests, as with so many things, that the root behaviors and attitudes about involving oneself in service learning activities were developed as young boys. I am sure there are similarities for the way men react to a call for aid in post-collegiate life too.

Among the tactics the different participants identified as useful were enlisting peer leaders to promote opportunities and have people extend personal invitations. On the whole, they found that male students were externally motivated and would become involved when it was a requirement or a project of a group with which they were associated.

Language use also appeared important. The article notes that when an instructor shifted to more action oriented language- “‘Social Justice: A Service-Based Exploration” to “Working Toward Social Justice.”

‘She saw a pretty spontaneous increase in the number of men enrolled,’ Mr. Chesbrough said. ‘That plays to gender stereotypes, but those words were more likely to catch men’s attention.’”

This piece is too short to be making decisions that will reshape your volunteer recruitment and training. The book talking about the study is due out this summer if you really feel you need to make an effort to involve more men in your organization. There are also a few other books on the subject.

My only caveat is to be skeptical about some of the generalizations about gender you may come across. I have seen enough debunkings of methodology on similar studies to have a cautious approach. I don’t deny people are motivated to volunteer for different reasons. In my experience there just isn’t any straightforward consistency in them.

Just the same, I have never really thought that we might be attracting or losing male volunteers based on the way we structured the appeal and volunteering experience so the concept is something to consider.

Personally, if I were a visual artist, I would probably tend toward the residencies in rural settings which is where a lot of them are located. Ready access to the Philadelphia art scene is not to be undervalued though.

I would probably sell my children into slavery to participate in the Arts/Industry program at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

It is probably fortunate then that I am not a visual artist. And I don’t have kids either. That is probably better since they have a performing arts program and I would still love to work there for the washrooms alone!

I don’t really talk about artist residencies too much. Perhaps because there aren’t too many for arts administrators. If you check the residency search tool at the Alliance of Artistic Communities website, administration is not even a search option. The only place I am aware of that offers one is The Studios of Key West which I wrote about 18 months ago.

I start to think that people like Michael Kaiser are correct when he talks about how few training opportunities there are to make people good arts administrators. There aren’t many opportunities for them to take a retreat and do research. Though to be fair, residencies for arts managers isn’t really part of the ethos. Arts administrators don’t get granted long periods of time to hone their skills. I don’t know if there is a market for offering residencies to them. How many administrators would ask for the opportunity? Most would say they don’t have the time. Kaiser talks about starting his day at 4 am which pretty much reflects the trend for many arts administrators.

One might say the Kennedy Center’s Art Management Fellowships are a sort of residency for arts managers. It combines practical work experience around the Kennedy Center with classes on relevant topics. And I believe they provide a $20,000 stipend to support yourself which is really pretty decent compared to what I was paid to intern. Though since the fellowships are for mid-career administrators,they would be bringing much more to the table than an intern would.

In any case, I would imagine the days there are just as long and involved as the position the arts manager left to become a fellow. That doesn’t give a lot of time for reflection and thinking about what the future of the arts might be and how one can restructure their organization to move forward to acknowledge these changes.

This summer I waswoolgathering a little about taking advantage of low real estate prices in Detroit to help grow an arts community there. I wonder if I was being too narrow in my vision and should have been thinking of including opportunities for arts managers to cultivate their skills too since there are so few opportunities.

With that in mind, I wanted to direct people’s attention to Americans for the Arts’ efforts at creating a conversation around green papers on topics of importance in the arts. Given the whole push for environmentally friendly activities, I initially thought a green paper was essentially an attempt to issue a white paper on good conservation practices.

It turns out, a green paper is actually a policy document similar to a white paper, only less binding. Who knew? I mean, there are ribbons of every color for every cause, I thought this was a similar attempt.

In any case, Americans for the Arts’ are making a big effort to have substantive conversations on many topics across the next year. In their definition:

“Green Papers are short, easy to read, visions of the future meant to inspire a nationwide dialogue on the future of the arts. As a way to celebrate the successes of the past 50 years in the arts field, Americans for the Arts has collected Green Papers from a variety of national arts service organizations and peer groups representing different perspectives and disciplines.”

Currently their topics include:

The Future of…

* Art Therapy
* Artists’ and Arts Organizations’ Preparedness and Emergency Response
* Artists’ Residency Programs
* Arts and Disability
* Arts Education
* Arts in Healthcare
* Arts Learning for Children/Youth
* Community Arts Education
* Cultural Democracy
* Dance Education
* Leadership for the Arts
* Jazz
* Preservation
* Private Sector Support for the Arts
* Public Art
* Public Voice in Arts Advocacy
* State Arts Agencies
* Strings
* Symphony Music
* Digital Infrastructure for the Creative Economy
* Theatre
* Urban Municipal Arts Agencies

They want people to get involved and contribute to the conversation. I wonder if they also need people to lead the conversations. You can’t tell from the list here, but there are no links to pages for Art Therapy, Arts and Disability, Jazz, State Arts Agencies, Symphony Music and Theatre. I don’t see a call for leaders, though I certainly may have missed it. Most of the Green Papers were rolled out on February 16, perhaps the leaders for the unactivated sections weren’t immediately available to discuss those areas.

I also am curious to know why there is someone leading Strings but not Symphony Music and why there is a Dance Education category, but no Dance. Guess I have to stick around, read and ask these questions.

Oh yeah, and where is the paper on environmental sustainability in the arts!

The measure would exempt private employers, including nonprofit groups, from paying their share of Social Security taxes for employees they hire through the end of 2010. The new hires must have been out of work for at least 60 days.

They would get an additional $1,000 bonus if they kept the employee on the payroll for a full year

I had heard about this a few weeks ago, but it never occurred to me that this would be a real boon for the non-profit world where a little savings can go a long way. I wish I could remember where I heard it, but I was listening to a radio show where one of the panelists said he wished the money going to public works was directed to non-profits because you could create hundreds of non-profit jobs for every construction job created.

The main of what I wanted to discuss is examining the employment status of people who work for your organization. According to Jessica R. Lubar, a lawyer at Venable LLP, the IRS is undertaking a study of employment tax compliance. They will be focusing on three areas: worker classification, fringe benefits and officer compensation.

What I wanted to point out specifically was the issue of worker classification. I know of a number of organizations that call those who work for them independent contractors so that they don’t have to attend to any of the tax withholding details. However, if the IRS doesn’t call them the same thing you do, there could be a lot of trouble.

“A worker is considered an employee if the employer exercises the requisite amount of control over the employee under common-law principles. Over the years, the courts and the IRS have articulated certain factors that are considered in making that determination. The IRS organized the factors that are considered into three categories: (1) Behavioral Control – whether the business has a right to direct and control how the worker does the task for which the worker is hired; (2) Financial Control – whether the business has a right to control the business aspects of the worker’s job; and (3) Type of Relationship.”

If you have made a mistake in classifying an employee as an independent contractor, there is an opportunity to rectify that situation and obtain relief from the penalties of that mistake. Lubar outlines these in the entry. You would obviously want to consult a lawyer because I am already confused by the first of the three requisite criteria–not treating a person like an employee. That seems to me to imply you have been treating the person like an independent contractor which means you are in the clear.

Perhaps the distinction is in whether you contractually had the right to behavioral and financial control but never enforced it thereby treating someone as if they were an independent contractor when technically they were not.

Guess that is what the lawyers get paid to tell us.

Please people, art is only demeaned by using it as a prop in a bet or a gauge of greatness. Oh. Well, actually I guess that is where a great deal of it obtains its value from.

I think a lot of us would be pleased to have our communities talking about how much better the arts and culture are here than in the next place over. There are sports rivalries from high school to professional levels and the fear/pride of someone else getting there first got us to the moon. Without evoking the old “if we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we…” trope, cultural rivalries may be something to inspire locally.

You wouldn’t want to compare yourself to New York City, because as evidenced by the end of the Dallas-Ft. Worth piece, you can’t compete with them for culture or condescension. But it could be mutually beneficial to get into a friendly rivalry with a similar municipality/county/town across the state or across state lines. Something that drives both locations to make progress against the other–but also celebrate the other’s successes, perhaps begrudgingly.

In the best of worlds, both locations might advocate for funding for the other, writing letters on their behalf. Because of course, the other guys may be more uncouth, but they are still a sight better than places X, Y and Z. If they were distant enough from each other not to overlap their audiences, some of the organizations could block book the same artists and then quiz the artists about whose theatre was nicer, whose audiences were more enthusiastic, etc. Done good naturedly, it could make artists excited to visit the other location. If the story about Philadelphia area theatres sharing the same production is any indication of the future, attempts at oneupmanship may just add to the fun.

My technical director does a version of this with the technical director at a partner organization. They send the company members to do strange things to the other one. He even has me holding up groups’ departures until he can instruct them in proper execution.

Everybody wins if both communities invest themselves in the rivalry. In addition to getting people excited about what might be coming and how they might top the other guys at their own game, it also gets people looking around for something of value to boast about in their community. Soon you get around to boasting about the quilts in all the bed and breakfasts having been created by a local artist whose quilts appeared in a show at the Smithsonian. Then you start to realize just how great it is to live where you do and how many extraordinarily talented people you never knew you had has neighbors.

Well, I have.

It is actually not as bad as you might think. Given the alternatives of a hurricane, earthquake or volcanic eruption, with the opportunity that either of the latter two will spawn a tsunami about which you will get at most 15 minutes warning, a half day’s notice is a luxury. Which is what I told the performer who remarked how calm I was in the face of it all.

It helped that the departure and arrival airports were both still open and the streets between the hotel and airport were virtually abandoned. Really the only complication we had was discovering the rental car return was directly under the civil defense siren when it blared its hourly warning.

I know I have mentioned it before, but one of the key characteristics of good management is staying cool in the face of adversity. This is especially valuable in the performing arts where you are not just providing a good example for your employees, but also creating a calm environment for artists to perform in. One of the principles a former supervisor ingrained in me was to try to make a traveling artist as comfortable as possible. His philosophy was that while our facility wasn’t home, we might be stop 15 in a 25 city tour and could contribute to getting the best performance of the person by reducing as much anxiety possible and providing the most hospitality we could.

Easy to say, tough to do though.

By the time I started working there, I already pretty much understood this to be the case. However, there was a time I wasn’t as empathetic. Between growing up in an environment that emphasized self-sufficiency and working in a few environments that were not terribly sympathetic to the needs of the regular employees, much less the performers, there was an incident I am somewhat embarrassed about that sticks out in my memory.

I was working for an organization that actually was very sympathetic and attentive to the needs of everyone working for them. You were expected to work hard, but an effort was made to find some equitable time off in return. Not being used to this, I was needlessly always waiting for the other shoe to drop and was prepared to defend myself when it came.

Not a very good outlook to have when one’s duties include company management. One of the actors twisted her ankle so I drove her to the doctor. It turned out she needed to go back for a follow up at some point and wanted me to drive her again. At the time, we were very busy and I told her I didn’t that we could drive her again later in the day.

This may sound innocuous to read and it really wasn’t a terrible or nasty thing to say. After all this build up, you may have been expecting something a little more horrific.

However… What I was thinking wasn’t so nice. I pretty much figured she was being a prima donna and like most actors was over dramatizing the whole situation into something just short of requiring amputation. I thought she needed to calm down and take a reality check. My job would have been so much easier if I didn’t have to deal with the actors.

Of course, I was talking as if I was being terribly set upon in the first place so I guess there was a little acting going on both sides. She proved to be the better actor because I got in trouble for my performance when she went to the managing director.

What I later realized I failed to understand was how distressing it is for performers to have any part of their instrument damaged. If you are not fully able to provide what you were hired to do for any significant length of time, you face the prospect of your career coming to an end. We hear about performers insuring the body parts which provide their iconic status and wonder at it all. But I would bet more people would do it if it were financially viable. This woman was at the point in her life when she wasn’t healing as quickly as she once did and this injury was likely a reminder of the precarious position she inhabited.

So now I work to anticipate any potential sources of anxiety and approach similar situations a little more seriously. Which is not to say I still don’t occasionally inwardly roll my eyes at some of the situations I run into. But as with many things, forewarned is forearmed, making real crises easier to handle.

Though it is also gratifying not to have the crisis be as great as predicted.

Earlier this month, the Clyde Fitch report linked to my entry on the continued marginalization of arts education in the class room asking, “but who will fight for it?”

That question has been echoing in my mind for the two weeks since. The reverberations reinforced by incidents like this story highlighted by Richard Kessler over at Dewey21C on the practice of schools dropping certified arts teachers in favor of outsourcing the task to actors. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for actors getting paid to ply their craft. There is just no mystery about the long term implications of accepting ever decreasing arts exposure and experiences in education.

The other situation that has kept the question of who will fight for arts education going through my mind is that my state now has the fewest instructional days in the country due to budget cuts that furlough teachers 17 days out of the year. Last week we had 200+ students drop out of a free performance at the last minute because the furlough days had put them so far behind, they couldn’t afford the time for a field trip. For most of these students there wasn’t even the factor of having to pay for a bus because the school is so close, it regularly uses our parking lot as an assembly point for disaster drills.

Over the next month or so, the instructor of a music class for those studying to teach K-12 is going to be on our stage getting the students up and moving putting together a project. I was standing in the wings today brimming with pride for the instructor who is doing a fantastic job on this first day of getting the students to move. The thing he has them working on combines history and literature with dance and music–and that is what I saw in just this first day. There could be a lot more wrapped up in this thing before they are done.

But as I stood there thinking I have to tell the instructor’s divisional dean that they need to get him in a tenure track position and never let him go, another part of me is wondering if there is any use in having all these students work so hard if there is an ever narrowing chance of putting what they are learning into practice.

Of course, there are many schools bucking this trend and they aren’t all in the higher tax base districts. I recently nominated a local school arts program for recognition for fighting the good fight using the arts to give students an outlet for the problems they face.

I don’t want to position the arts as prescriptive only, but the truth is in the aftermath of the earthquake, a lot of Haitians came together in song. The arts are the basic factors which tie us together. So when arts teachers and artists are derided for being paid to teach and produce what is fun, it is because music does soothe the savage beast. Arts and cultural experiences answer fundamental needs.

I think people may confuse the primal emotional satisfaction they experience with the fulfillment of need they gain from disposable products. Plastic forks and paper plates allow you to continue enjoying a picnic or party rather than spending the time dealing with dirty dishes while everyone else has fun. Hearing a song/seeing a show/looking at a painting quickly puts you at ease and because you can’t identify exactly why, you equate it with the same feeling you get using disposable conveniences.

It wasn’t really until this moment that I begin to understand why people like Scott Walters often bring up the idea of slow food in relation to the arts. Just as fast food can create a disconnect and lack of appreciation for what is really invested in a well prepared meal, so too can being removed from the methods of arts production. It isn’t just a matter of lack of exposure means people don’t have an opportunity to enjoy and understand the arts, it is also a matter of not being cognizant of what has been invested in its creation.

Familiarity breeds contempt. At one time high wire circus acts were the main attraction. But as people became more familiar with the experience, there became a greater need to up the ante for the act to hold peoples’ interest. It wasn’t enough to just walk across forward and backward with and without a net. But have you ever tried to walk a rope suspended only a couple feet off the ground? I tell you, you gain a new respect for even the simple stuff.

I am not saying anything new here, of course. Studies have shown that people who have hands on creative experiences are more likely to participate in the arts later on in life.

Who will fight for the arts? Well, we all have to, even if it is in small increments every day. Certainly, the big crusaders need to be there too, but they can’t be seeking success in spite of the inaction of everyone else. If you succumb to the despair of the direction of things and give up creating opportunities to learn and experience, then there will be no one trained to teach art when someone comes looking.