Not letting the curtain fall

But, recently, I’ve been thinking about my mother’s present — ever since the president has said it’s his intention to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. What he’s proposing hasn’t received much attention and most citizens aren’t aware many cuts are already occurring.

In America’s budget, the NEA amounts to about 62 cents per person. Since its creation under President Lyndon B. Johnson, the endowment has awarded thousands of grants — not only to, among others, artists, playwrights, choreographers, musicians, dancers and photographers, but also to little theaters and to struggling dance groups, to small-town chamber music ensembles, and to local arts education programs. It’s also contributed to major museums so they can mount large exhibitions, and to big city symphony orchestras, as well as opera and ballet companies.

I know many folks think it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money to worry about whether a community orchestra in a place they’ve never been may have to shut its doors forever. But as a friend once told me — a friend who founded a theater company in San Diego that had been the recipient of such grants —one of the ways we measure the character of a country is by its public commitment to the arts: for in art we might find a common ground as human beings, and celebrate what we share and what we strive for — not what divides us. In this way, the arts aspire to close the gap between us and everything that is not us, and that in recognizing our different points of view might bend us toward the vision of inclusion that’s at the heart of the American Dream.

To not only be involved in the arts, but also to bear witness to them, can be a field upon which we might all become spiritually and culturally richer. To sustain the continuity of the arts in this country is to remind us that we must never cease to examine our world, and one of the ways to do this is through the free expression of our vibrant imaginations.

Years ago, I received a fundraising message from a theater troupe located near the Oregon border that had just constructed — to perform their work — a big tent on the outskirts of town. They said the phrase “big tent” shouldn’t only describe a political philosophy, but also the visionary nature of art itself as a place where our solitudes might meet, and, even for a little while, our longed-for sense of humanity’s possibilities is restored.  

The letter ended with a quote from the poet Rumi: “Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.”

For awhile, I carried this theater company’s note in my pocket, occasionally taking it out to read. Eventually, I dropped it into the crowded drawer of my bedside nightstand, where, by chance, I found it recently.

When I unfolded the yellowing page and slowly read the words I’d nearly forgotten, I remembered those Sunday afternoons with my mother at the ballet. The performance just over, with the applause of a thousand people drifting away, and the lights of the theatre illuminating all of us as we rose from our seats.

Now, these many years later, what’s stayed with me most —what I understand in my soul — is the memory of how each of us in the audience may have walked away as individuals, yet still we left as part of a whole, part of a community that had been swept away by the collective experience of art.

To take these experiences away — these soul-lifting events in the world of art — is to diminish the possibility of our communion. Art — and democracy — are, at their cores, about this possibility: that we might celebrate our individuality, as well as the passionate bond of being part of a community. To, at once, be citizens of our own souls, and then, alongside others, citizens of a land that unceasingly supports and endows our culture with the diverse gift of our imaginations.

Mike Nagler taught for many years at Cañada College and was a member of the Burlingame Library Board and Foundation