The Case For Another Percent
"Life would be impossible if everything was remembered. The secret is knowing how to choose what should be forgotten."- Roger Martin du Gard
The NEA just came out with a study that is a pretty devastating read about the affect the pandemic has had on artists and the art sector in general. Top line: the pandemic hit the art industry twice as hard as other industries. Unfortunately, this is not surprising. Art is experiential….concerts, exhibits, theaters, trips; art relies on experiences as a marketing tool. And then there is the unpleasant fact that many (most?) people still have this crazy idea that art is something that can be sacrificed first when times are tough.
Of course the pandemic hit the art sector hard.
As someone who has spent a career supporting artistic voices and projects, the NEA study is a call to action to develop new mechanisms to support artists. More than support, to create a pathway to a rich, more comfortable life for them. My friend Lou Cove started The Canvas Fund a few years ago when realizing that 1% of money that goes towards philanthropy goes to this art sector (he is using a Jewish lens, but it is a universal issue). That is just a miserable number. His goal is to increase the support by 1% over the next few years, and his data shows, that 1% will make a huge difference.
Art influences our world….enriches our lives….brings us together in such a profound way. More than anything else, the artistic voice has a power to change the way we think about our planet, ourselves…our day-to-day reality, our life experience. It is the greatest weapon against so many of the issues we are facing (tyrants, fascists, and war criminals excluded) because it can be used to educate and inspire, to create movements and to offer masses of people digestible ways of thinking differently. And it does this through the joyous celebration of imagination and human potential.
This newsletter is always dedicated to the celebration of the artistic voice, as it comes in so many flavors and in our modern age of information consumption can be easily lost or hard to find.
Hyper Allergic wrote up a good piece about the NEA study if interested. Please pass it around. We need the wake up call: we need to support artists now. More than ever.
John Korty, award-winning director who helped establish Bay Area filmmaking, dead at 85
File this under: and artist who changed the world, and his industry: my friend’s father (who I never met) passed away last week. I knew about some of what he did in his career, but as the story has publicly unfolded, the importance of his work has come into more focus.
The Art of a Haunted United States
The Minneapolis Institute of Art has curated an intriguing exhibit around ghostly are from the last 200+ years. Based on the 1950 piece above by Gertrude Abercrombie and others showcased in the article…it looks pretty great.
Inside Stockhausen’s WDR Studio for Electronic Music
Yes this is an article that is 5 years old….and I just saw it. But it is totally cool….“On the occasion of its move out of Cologne, US photographer Peter Beste visits a key birthplace of electronic composition”. I looked up the Haus Mödrath, the manor house the studio was supposed to be moved to. It might be there…but it would be hard to know it from the website (although they are putting on some killer exhibits that I would totally check out).
Historic Black beach, once venue for James Brown, Billie Holiday, will become Md. park
“Activist and historian Vince Leggett has worked for more than 15 years to publicize the "Black Coast" - a historic stretch of the Chesapeake Bay in Anne Arundel County. It was a summer retreat for Black Marylanders and a venue for music legends such as Chuck Berry, James Brown and Billie Holiday. And now thanks to the state of Maryland, a small piece of that history will live on as a state park. Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, announced Monday that the state will provide $4.8 million toward the purchase of waterfront property to develop a new public park in Annapolis.”
Wallace Stegner's last novel celebrates life's changes
“‘Crossing to Safety’ by Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner was published in 1987. It was Stegner’s final novel and a beautiful, life-affirming way to end a storied career. In this episode of the Talk of Iowa Book Club, host Charity Nebbe is joined by three expert readers for a discussion of this treasured text.”
Sun Ra: Art on Saturn: The Album Cover Art of Sun Ra's Saturn Label
I have friends who have original printed record covers pretty much hand-made by Sun Ra and his band of Saturnites…I have only seen a few copies. And this book is a comprehensive look (at $75 it better be!).
I Am Waiting
By: LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI
I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting
for someone to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep through the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty’s clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am waiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder
