Art on Life Support

Kurt Vonnegut wrote in his book Palm Sunday, that free enterprise was killing literature.  He was right.  Our schools are eliminating art, music and theater programs.  Publishers are publishing less novels.  Short story writers have very few places available to publish their stories.  Poets, the scourge of the literary world, have no one left to buy their poems.  Art, in general, is on life support.

I can't pinpoint exactly when the arts became ill.  I suspect that illness began somewhere after the hippie movement.  The Hippie lifestyle filtered into the mainstream and a cultural appreciation for the arts filtered into commercial profits.  The profits birthed a rush of mass appeal that began to smother individual creativity. The illness progressed during the '80's and into the 90's.   Sure, there have been some bright spots mixed in there; some Kurt Cobains, Chuck Palahuniuks.  But the arts slowly became more and more diseased, dying from a lack of true self expression.   

Consider this:  How difficult is it for an artist to live, supporting themselves on their art alone?  How difficult is it for a writer, to just be a writer, and not have to work in another occupation to make ends meet?  I often wonder how many great artists and writers never get discovered, because they are too busy trying to make a living and don't have the time available to develop their talents? 

While discussing this topic with my lover, she pointed out that everything today seems manufactured and not created.  The masses have opted to spend their dollars on entertainment over creativity.  Music is commercialized.  Many new music artists are selected for their looks and appeal, rather than their creative genius, because appeal sells albums and selling makes profit.  Perhaps the Buggles were right, video killed the radio star.  George Strait nailed it when he sang Murder on Music Row.  Rock and Roll?  Hip Hop?  Country?  They all sound like commercialized pop music. 

That's just music.  I suspect that money is what is killing the arts.  Kurt Vonnegut pointed out that today's publishers don't want to publish an author's first novel anymore.  It's simply not cost effective.  But how is an author supposed to develop into an author, if no one is willing to bet on those first novels?  How is a musician supposed to sell records, when the industry won't sign them because they don't have the right look?  One of my favorite country/folk/americana artists is a man named Hayes Carll.  He's a brilliant singer.  His voice is raw, raspy, different than anything you hear in mainstream music.  How is he not famous? 

How is Honey Boo Boo an American icon?  Kim Kardashian?  Paris Hilton?  How is it that one in every 20 American homes contain a fucking Thomas Kinkade print?  Kinkade's art exemplifies everything wrong with mass produced art.  I find it dull, boring and unoriginal, which often seems to equal mass appeal.  

Recently in the midst of the City of Detroit going through bankruptcy, there were threats of auctioning off the paintings in their art museum.  This, more than anything in recent times, caught my attention.  What a travesty it would have been if a museum full of treasures, would have been sold off, piece by piece, to private collectors. 

So the arts are on life support.  My question is, what are we as a society, going to do about it?  It is becoming more and more obvious, that government dollars are not going to be allotted to the arts any longer.  It is more important to spend 50 billion dollars on theoretical warplanes that don't work.  So it's up to us. 

I don't have all of the answers.  It's difficult for me to be disciplined enough to keep money in my savings account, let alone be financially astute enough to develop a workable economic plan for saving the arts.  But I think I have some ideas.  Why don't we challenge ourselves to spend money out of our own pockets on the arts this year?  Instead of buying manufactured made in China crap as birthday gifts, why don't we instead buy paintings from local starving artists?  Why don't we buy self-published books from local writers?  How about tickets for the local opera house, the local repertoire?  Why don't we include local open mic poetry readings in our regular date nights with our lovers?  Go see local musicians playing in local bars?  Visit local art shows? 

I'm open to ideas.  If you have any, I'd love to hear your feedback.  The arts are too important for our generation to be the ones that let them die on our watch.  The arts are on life support.  Are we going to stand back and watch the plug be pulled, or are we going to pitch in and breathe some new life into them?  The choice is ours.