United Nations building, Geneva
I have been saddened lately by a strong sense of national disharmony. By a screaming, aggressive, desperate atonality. By a discordant barrage of sharps and flats that not only hurt the ear, but the soul. In fact, I think it has never been this bad before, though I do acknowledge that the shrill bombs of hatred and hostility have been with us always. They just seem louder now.
Right now, it feels like it's never been worse, though undoubtedly in the past it has. Either way, I ponder and am depressed by reality, the waste, the senselessness. The sheer ugliness of the decibels.
Disunity and disharmony is a wrench in the gears of the metropolis and the countryside. Not because we should all be the same -- far far from it -- but because we are exaggerating our differences and building walls between one another that needlessly make life more difficult. It especially makes life more difficult for those not in the majority, and we should all know better than to do this. We should know better.
I think much of this has to do with the lack of great art on display, the lack of making great art, the lack of focusing on formal (and informal) beauty in all of its manifestations. In the 60s, they used to say, Make love, not war. I'd add to that, Make art, not war. Bow down to the magnificence of nature. Gaze at the profundity of words, images and sounds. Create and recreate. Focus!!
When people gather together to sing and dance and laugh about the whole scene, they aren't likely to be aggressively involved in beating one another to a pulp. When we sit down and read a great book, we're not likely to take a bat to one another or launch yet another insane war. Of course, if the creative work in question is incendiary propaganda, the reader may drop the book and find that bat . . . but then it wasn't "great" in the first place. It was birdcage liner.
As mentioned on this site before, I believe strongly in the healing powers of art. I wish this huge and rich nation would put its considerable weight behind far greater support for the arts, elevate them, celebrate them, teach them, instead of celebrating tabloid life. Celebrity life. This absence of the great, and this celebration of the tawdry leads to anger, hatred and bitterness. In my view, rather than creating a Republic of the Arts, we've been living in a dictatorship of the cheap and trashy. A radical reevaluation of current ways and means is long overdue.
I agree that hostility has always been with us. At any time I care to think over the last few decades there have always been voices of hatred, on any side you care to name. I think the real difference today is the astonishing lack of cultural understanding and even basic education shown on all sides. Even politicans who clearly know better — because one can go on youtube and see old speeches of theirs in which they are thoughtful and eloquent — are “dumbing themselves down” in media presentation.
Unfortunately it will be even more difficult for the arts to make any difference in such an environment, mainly because you are speaking to communities to which art does not remotely matter. (Just try making a living as a painter, artist, or non-pop musician…)
sadly…
Many good points. Yes, there is a definite dumbing down in this country. A shrill embrace of anti-intellectualism. Almost as if people are proud of ignorance at times.
I am striving to make sure this site is not about politics, so I’ll refrain from casting thoughts for one side or another. But I will say I think America has a colossal job ahead of it. It needs massive healing. It needs major soul searching. And it really, really needs to calm down.
You’re probably right that this is something that goes well beyond the arts, unfortunately. Something that the arts just won’t have much of an impact upon and aren’t really equipped to handle. I wish it were different .… Arcadia we are not.
Some of the burden rests on individual artists, namely those materially impoverished and so culturally and marginalized artists who express their forms from within the dilapidated birdcage — a good image by you — and so satirize and ironize the bad situation they perceive. At the same time, the artist’s creations, perhaps, must be great and wonderful, enthralling and ennobling. Sometimes what seems desperate comes from not enough attention brought to the building and the celebrating aspect in which the contributions of the artist as critic and objector can go beyond their needling posture and help the world they partly create to flourish and grow in spite of these adverse circumstances. I apologize if this is stated in a manner that is too complicated or wordy, but hope it helps you further to appreciate the current existential dilemma.
@Robert Mueller —
Well said, Robert.
I’d add to my earlier remarks that there is a sense, at least for me, that we have fewer adults in a phase of maturity now. Out in the open. Running things. Carrying on the national conversation. We have adults stuck in an angry adolescent phase. Angry at the wrong things. Ticked off at some bogeyman they’ve come to believe in. We need wise old Nestor telling Achilles to hold back, calm down, be patient. We need the wisdom of those who have seen how much better peace is than war. How much better beauty is than hate. How much better light is than deep bitter darkness.
Art can show us the way, but artists have to be wise. And more people outside the arts have to find their inner child or their inner Spinoza.
Beautifully expressed, and puts me in a new place of light and hope.