(December 16, 2005) — Last year I attended a tour of the LA County Museum of Art hosted by a man whose ideas dangerously skittered along the fine lines of intelligence and insanity; in other words, he was an artist. If you ask me, he did more scaring than teaching, standing there clad in a black turtle neck, wearing glasses the color of curry powder and having wiry bristles sticking out of his chin. Give him a drum and he might as well have been a beatnik. But it really wasn’t about the eccentricity; it was his word of caution that sent me-and all the other young artists on the tour-thinking of ourselves as walking time bombs by the end of the day. “Artists are very dangerous people,” he said in a wheezy tone. “The government is afraid of you because they know of your power. If ever they decide to impose martial law on this country, expect to find military trucks waiting for you outside your door.” Democracy to martial law, artists to federal fugitives-wait a minute, I need to make sense of all this. What could a bunch of hormone-driven creatures that happen to have a knack for the arts possibly do to send the White House big shots trembling in their knees? Was this man out of his mind? Ideas and imagination was his immediate response. Because to artists, even a lamp post standing haphazardly on the side of the road could become a source of inspiration-a manifestation of some enigma in life. Because they feel with heightened emotions what others choose to ignore. Because the world to them is not a speeding train of abstract shapes and colors, but something tangible-something of substance that needs every one-sixtieth of a minute scrutinized. Because they see-and through their vision they can make others see the overlooked reality in whichever way we perceive it to be. The first time I heard this, I though Mr. Crazy Talk was just giving our jobs more credit than they deserve. I mean, if we’re that essential to the survival of humanity, then why is it that every time a school suffers a budget cut, the art department is the most affected? Why is it that aspiring young artists have to compromise with the commercial world by finding another way to make a living besides just producing art? Support for the arts in our capitalist society is waning-it’s becoming more and more a thing to brag about in cocktail parties but not necessarily understood. Art in its purest essence cannot be measured by money, and the few non-profit organizations that still promote it to the modern world are neglected and ignored. So where in the big scheme of things do we belong? I suppose the world is already too blind to see the things that actually matter.
