When Either-Or Is Neither-Nor

[Note: This post has been updated (2) as of 8:55 AM Eastern on 6 Jan. See below.]

On reading this rant on arts funding by rock star and composer David Byrne, we were struck especially by the peculiar, even perverse, idea tacitly underlying these otherwise mostly unobjectionable grafs:

[M]aybe it’s time to rethink all this museum, opera and symphony funding — and I refer mainly to state funding. [...] I think maybe it’s time to stop, or more reasonably, curtail somewhat, state investment in the past — in a bunch of dead guys (and they are mostly guys, and mostly dead, when we look at opera halls) — and invest in our future. Take that money, that $14 million from the city, for example, let some of those palaces, ring [sic] cycles and temples close — forgo some of those $32M operas — and fund music and art in our schools. Support ongoing creativity in the arts, and not the ongoing glorification and rehashing of the work of those dead guys. Not that works of the past aren’t inspirational, important and relevant to future creativity — plenty of dead people’s work is endlessly inspiring — but funding for arts in schools has been cut to zero in many places. Maybe the balance and perspective has to be redressed and restored just a little. Plus, there are plenty of CDs and DVDs of the dead guys out there already, should one be curious.

Funding future creativity is a real investment — there’s a chance these kids will build, write, draw or play something that will fill theaters, clubs, stadiums, web pages, whatever. The dead guys won’t write more symphonies.

[...]

I sense that in the long run there is a greater value for humanity in empowering folks to make and create than there is in teaching them the canon, the great works and the masterpieces. In my opinion, it’s more important that someone learn to make music, to draw, photograph, write or create in any form than it is for them to understand and appreciate Picasso, Warhol or Bill Shakespeare — to say nothing of opry. In the long term it doesn’t matter if students become writers, artists or musicians — though a few might. It's more important that they are able to understand the process of creation, experimentation and discovery — which can then be applied to anything they do, as those processes, deep down, are all similar. It’s an investment in fluorescence.

The polemical "dead guys" rhetoric aside (Mr. Byrne's piece is, after all, a rant, not a sober assessment, and what's a rant absent polemical rhetoric?), what especially struck us about these grafs is the tacit underlying notion of either-or rather than both-and. In the domain of the arts, that sort of either-or thinking is literally nonsense (non-sense); is, in fact, simply preposterous. Like love and marriage, and a horse and carriage, in the domain of the arts you can't have one without the other (i.e., "ongoing creativity [and education] in the arts," and, "the ongoing...rehashing of the work of...dead guys").

Yes, state (as in government; federal, state, and local) funds are not infinitely expandable, especially in this economy, but that's insufficient justification or reason for suggesting state support of "ongoing creativity [and education] in the arts," and not for "the ongoing...rehashing of the work of...dead guys"; which is to say, the cutting of state funding for the latter and applying it instead to state funding of the former. In the domain of the arts, to do that is to throw good money into a black hole hoping that a miracle will take place and something of meaningful value will somehow emerge by managing, magically, to escape the black hole's grip.

Ain't gonna happen. Not ever.

So, what's the answer? It occurs to us that in a nation as rich as ours, what's required first and above all is the proper will, not the money. Once the will is firmly in place, the money will be found for funding both "ongoing creativity" and education, and for the "rehashing of the work of...dead guys" — always. And central to establishing that proper will is the recognition and understanding that nothing of meaningful value is ever created ex nihilo, and in the domain of the arts, either both flourish or both die.

Such has it always been, and so it will always be, ad vitam aeternam.

(Our thanks to the Minnesota Orchestra's Sam Bergman of Inside The Classics for the link.)

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Update (7:04 PM Eastern on 5 Jan): Theater theorist, Artistic Director of Theatre Minima, and playwright George Hunka of Superfluities Redux sends us the following apropos excerpt from Jonathan Swift's short, 1697 satire, "The Battle of the Books":

For, pray Gentlemen, was ever any thing so Modern as the Spider in his Air, his Turns, and his Paradoxes? He argues in the Behalf of You his Brethren, and Himself, with many Boastings of his native Stock, and great Genius; that he Spins and Spits wholly from himself, and scorns to own any Obligation or Assistance from without. Then he displays to you his great Skill in Architecture, and Improvement in the Mathematicks. To all this, the Bee, as an Advocate, retained by us the Antients [i.e., the Ancients], thinks fit to Answer; That if one may judge of the great Genius or Inventions of the Moderns, by what they have produced, you will hardly have Countenance to bear you out in boasting of either. Erect your Schemes with as much Method and Skill as you please; yet, if the materials be nothing but Dirt, spun out of your own Entrails (the Guts of Modern Brains) the Edifice will conclude at last in a Cobweb: The Duration of which, like that of other Spiders Webs, may be imputed to their being forgotten, or neglected, or hid in a Corner. For any Thing else of Genuine, that the Moderns may pretend to, I cannot recollect; unless it be a large Vein of Wrangling and Satyr, much of a Nature and Substance with the Spider's Poison; which, however, they pretend to spit wholly out of themselves, is improved by the same Arts, by feeding upon the Insects and Vermin of the Age. As for Us, the Antients, We are content with the Bee, to pretend to Nothing of our own, beyond our Wings and our Voice: that is to say, our Flights and our Language; For the rest, whatever we have got, has been by infinite Labor, and search, and ranging thro' every Corner of Nature: The Difference is, that instead of Dirt and Poison, we have rather chose to till our Hives with Honey and Wax, thus furnishing Mankind with the two Noblest of Things, which are Sweetness and Light.

Our thanks to Mr. Hunka.

Update 2 (8:55 AM Eastern on 6 Jan): Musician Osbert Parsley of This Blog Will Change The World zeros in on and neatly demolishes yet another of David Byrne's, um, fuzzy notions; viz., this one:

[Thomas] Hoving and a couple of others, following this line of thinking, created the blockbuster museum show — which famously brought Tut to the masses, and made the Met and other like-minded museums into temples for all, instead of the dusty halls for academics they had become. Hard to remember, but the Met was once a fussy old place, and now it’s super popular — which is not in itself a bad thing. Although the idea was loudly espoused that art was for all, and all could benefit from exposure to it (something like a flu shot), this idea was not exactly democratic, not as I would define it — though it was certainly portrayed as democratizing art and culture. What the movement was actually doing was letting more people know that culture was, and is, HERE, and you slobs, you hoi polloi, are over HERE. We want you all to look at it, and listen to it, but don’t even think you could ever make it, or that your feeble efforts are anywhere close to these Himalayan peaks we have on display.

Needless to say (that is, needless to say for regular readers of S&F), we are in wholehearted agreement with what Mr. Parsley had to say in his rebuttal.