The cynical optimist

Let me repeat the title of this post Art matters.

Maybe let’s put it in bold? Art Matters.

Now throw in some italics and some all caps? ART MATTERS.

No matter how it is written…the words still ring true.

ART MATTERS.

You may be getting the idea that this is personal to me, and you’d be absolutely right. My entire life has been defined by the arts and to see it belittled time and time again, cut from schools and out of kids lives stings.

I was a shy kid growing up. I found it difficult to make friends, I had this idea that I wasn’t interesting enough or good enough and I didn’t want to waste anybody’s time so I made the choice to go it alone, or mostly alone…I’ve always had a core group of friends that totalled 3-4 at the most…

I was already an avid reader by the time my first family tragedy happened. In fourth grade my mother got very sick and spent months in the hospital. During those months I went to school and stood over my aunt’s house while my dad spent every waking hour by my mom’s side at the hospital, then after visiting hours were over he’d come pick us up and we’d go to bed and rinse and repeat.

It was during those months that I deep dove into reading, I started to read the Harry Potter series that year, I read book after book and found myself losing myself in magical worlds, where I could imagine myself being the person I could never be  in real life and I truly believe the reason I came out of that whole ordeal okay was because I had an unbreakable lifeline. Art, books that told me that there could be trials and tribulations, but there could always be a time were we’d laugh and celebrate after. That even when the world seemed dark, light would shine again and that’s exactly what happened. Six months after she went into the hospital my mother came home and 20 years later she’s still with us. I got more time to celebrate, to laugh and to grow. There isn’t a day that goes by that I am not grateful for that, and to every author who is out there writing books for the people like me who need them when the world seems about to collapse.

After reading books for years I seems like only a natural jump to thinking about writing and I began I believe I’ve mentioned it on a different blog post on here that in middle school I created a comic called The World as we Know It which starred an anthropomorphic twinkie superhero who worked with a robotic friend to save the world from a villainous cyborg…this was also the year I wrote a short story with a friend which was about a man robbing a Mcdonald’s with a squirt gun. Maybe not the best ideas but I was making art it was fun so I didn’t really care.

Later on in Middle school, I’d write countless short stories in a writing journal I had to keep for English, all while continuing to read book after book. I was discovering who I wanted to be, and writing the story of my own life all at once. I also began to write poetry and it was in poetry I really began to use Art as a way to understand myself.

Poetry might be one of the most important forms of Art in my personal story, because it was how I best understood myself. I could speak of death, depression, of love and hope. I went through some stuff early on in high school and I got through it by writing. I faced my sadness and confusion head on by the words that would end up on the page.

Even in a weird way, this blog is an extension of that. I first started this blog as a new way to challenge my story telling and as a way to decompress, I guess is the way to word it. It was a new outlet I had never tried before and I find myself posting most on days where I am trying to work through something or having a particularly bad day.

Another way I’ve seen art shape the world I live in is through and Art program that I volunteered for here in my hometown. It was an after school program at an alternative high school that allowed the kids to express themselves. They brought in break dance instructors, they brought in poets and wrote music which they would then record and turn into a CD by years end, and that program expanded into the summer where they would go to a local cemetery and learn about the residents, they would be introduced to history and our library as they looked up the people they had found in the cemetery.

Working with them and seeing them change and grow over the course of a year has been one of the most rewarding and amazing experiences of my life. I’ll never forget walking into the room on the first day and hearing the music and laughter, seeing the joy written on their faces. Art very well could be something that saved those kids, just like it has saved me countless times.

Music is the soundtrack to my life. I know that might sound cliche but it’s the truth at least for me. As I am writing this I am listening to a soundtrack from my current new favorite musical  (Starry Musical, I highly recommend it…it’s been on repeat since March…and has helped me get through this pandemic…) I go to sleep with music playing, I play video games with music playing, I write with music playing. Hell, I even proposed to my fiance by co-opting lyrics from one of our favorite movies. Music quiets my mind, inspires me to be better. It is also where I’ve found myself.

Dear Evan Hansen is another musical that I would absolutely recommend. It is the reason I am currently working in the position that I am at work. I don’t have a lot of confidence in myself. I constantly count myself out before I even try so when I was offered a supervisory position at my job I immediately wanted to turn it down but asked for some time to think about it and over the next two weeks I battled in my head between denying or accepting this offer. The backdrop to that epic battle was “Waving through the Window” a song in which one line goes “I’ve learned to slam on the brakes, before I even turned the key.” and that line kept playing over and over in my head and I realized that’s who I was and exactly who I didn’t want to be so in an act of defiance I accepted the promotion. I just passed 4 years in that position last month. Again without Art and the artists behind it I would more than likely be at a different job completely or hating myself for not having taken that chance.

As I hope by now you can see, Art has been there at every point of my life, in darkness it has offered me hope, in love it has helped me show it, it has inspired and pushed me to new heights. My life is undeniably better because it has art in it.

So when I see the arts being treated as less than or non-essential I get angry (which then leads to a blog post!). I can’t imagine a world without the arts, even though some school districts throughout the country are trying to usher in that world. They are taking away the ability for kids to express themselves and explore and expand their minds, there are plenty of studies that prove my point that’s why I decided to go with a personal story today.

I truly believe that the world would be a much darker place without it. 2020 has been horrible, but without movies, books, music, creative people doing creative and amazing things in any form, and against all odds it would have been so much worse. Because of the Arts I have hope.

And I know my story is not the only one out there. So many people are still here today because of the arts. Lives are shaped everyday by the arts. We consume, create, move because of art. It’s how I’ve lived, it’s how I’ve grown. Art has shaped me. So I stand by my initial statement.

ART MATTERS.