Someone I know wrote the other day that his friends in Japan are “getting used to the aftershocks; they’ve become normal.” But of course, “normal” doesn’t quite describe what happens when we sustain repeated shocks, becoming inured. What actually happens has more to do with numbing, with defensive insulation, and with the denial or evasion …
I’ve been on the road for speaking engagements, the proximate cause of my recent blog pause. I tend to write here when something worth sharing crystallizes in my mind. But travels notwithstanding, the truth is that just lately, it’s been hard to find the crystals in the fog of reactivity. My subjects today are how …
Note to readers: based on response to my recent 3-part series on cultural funding, Life Implicates Art, I’m letting people know about my workshop on Reframing The Arts, a powerful generator of new ideas, fresh inspiration, and transformative action. Please contact me if you want to explore sponsoring one. Triage is the process of culling …
Note: This is the third in a rapid series addressing the current crisis in arts funding and how to head off future crises. Here’s a combined link to all three. After this, I return to my normal rhythm of posting an essay once or twice a week. My two previous essays focused first on the …
My last essay, exploring deeper meanings of the current threats to defund public arts agencies, elicited a great deal of comment. The bulk of it came from people who, like me, perceive the stuckness of mainstream arts advocacy and are seeking alternatives. So, what now? What do we do about it? I have a few …
My mailbox is being flooded with panicked messages from artists across the country. By executive order, the governor of Kansas has abolished the Kansas Arts Commission (KAC). The governor of Texas wants to defund that state’s arts agency, as does the governor of South Carolina. Republicans want to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts …
I’ve been mesmerized by a five-minute video shot in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, part of the Zero Silence documentary project, focusing on young people using new forms of organizing to change authoritarian regimes in the Middle East. In the clip, an unseen interviewer questions an unnamed young woman in the midst of a vast sea of …
It’s too soon to say about Tunisia, of course: will its revolution succeed? Will a democratic coalition endure, establishing a new order of government by consent? Will that spirit spread through the region? Who knows? But it is not too soon to suggest some possibilities and implications emerging from the chain-reaction of liberation that has …
The word of the week is blame. Who should be blamed for Jared Lee Loughner, the loony white male devotee of the Sovereign Citizen Movement who shot nineteen people outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday, killing six and wounding fourteen, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords? What happens when scapegoating overtakes a culture, as it has overtaken …
In my last essay, I wrote about class diversity. From an intensely personal perspective, I questioned the practice—just as prevalent in our national discourse as in the realm of family secrets—of entering into tacit agreements to normalize what should never be considered acceptable. I said that it was time to break the pact upholding the …