In the midst of a world that seems to be spinning further and further apart, forty people have been gathering in an old auto body shop daily to create art. It’s not the cleanest space. The climate control leaves something to be desired. It’s furnished with folding chairs, some tables, and a piano. There’s a maze of multicolored tape on the floor indicating where walls and doors are supposed to exist. For two weeks now, this group is giving of their time, their talents, and subsuming their egos into a greater whole, taking direction from a master musician and a theatre professional who are working to make something that both entertains and illuminates the human condition. We have one more week together and then, as is the ephemeral nature of stage production, we scatter our separate ways. Those who wish to view the finished product can purchase tickets from Opera Birmingham.
When Pietro Mascagni and Rugerro Leoncavallo separately sat down in a recently unified Italy in the early 1890s to create Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci respectively, they could not have conceived of our modern society. But their tales of contemporaneous Southern Italian peasantry and their passions still resonate more than a century later. Their glorious music still speaks. Primal human instincts to love, to belong, to mistrust the outsider don’t change. We can see ourselves in Santuzza’s ostracism or Canio’s feelings of betrayal. And creation is the antithesis and the answer to the destruction that is happening all around. It’s the way to cope and to move forward. The arts often flourish in times of political trouble for this reason. There is a distinct human need for creation during periods of destruction. Unfortunately, the current political circumstances are playing havoc on the arts ecosystem in this country. Most performing arts institutions, with the removal of federal and state support (which was never all that much to begin with when compared to most Western countries) are facing budget reductions of 30-60%. You know what to do. Go to the theatre. Visit a museum. Attend a concert. Encourage a young person to explore their artistic talents. Make a donation to an arts institution or to a school or training program. The arts are going to make the next decade or so more bearable in ways that impulse purchase from Amazon won’t.
Where to begin in trying to parse current events? I haven’t a clue. An American delegation consisting of presidential family members and hangers on with no diplomatic experience or training seem unable to negotiate with Iranian leadership at talks in Islamabad. The secretary of state, who should be the point person on anything of this significance is busy attending cage match fighting in Florida. Iran appears to continue to hold the upper hand with its blockade of the straits of Hormuz despite the barely coherent rhetoric coming from the president’s mouth and social media accounts. I’m seeing an enfant terrible having a tantrum because in this instance, he is not getting his way. No amount of calling the press who report the truth liars or firing of military leaders who point out the insanity of his decisions or attacking our allies for not joining in a pointless war of aggression (he doesn’t seem to understand the basic fact that NATO is a defensive pact) is going to change that he charged into a conflict all past presidents avoided due to the entirely predictable consequences that we all now see playing out.
At least the monolith of the right wing media echo chamber seems to be fracturing with various conservative pundits disavowing Trump and his policies over his entanglement in Middle East politics. When you’ve lost Alex Jones and MTG, you no longer have your base locked in permanent adoration. And apparently Viktor Orban’s poll numbers in Hungary have dropped even lower since Trump and Vance attempted to sway the electorate with endorsements, visits, and promises of aid. US reputation has been so badly diminished on the world stage over the last eighteen months that even when we have a new administration, it will be decades before we will be able to be recognized as a major force for good in the world.
I’m going to Europe in a month for a couple of weeks. I’m calling this my Gary Indiana trip as stops include Paris France, New York and Rome. (I suppose, to do the full Gary, I would have had to start in New Orleans). I know that the Europeans I meet will look at me very differently than they would have two years ago. I’ll make no secret of my disdain for our current government but how do I explain that our bastion of democracy has so easily surrendered itself to antidemocratic forces? We have all seen the negative consequences of this administration and what have we collectively done to combat that? Have we demanded of our elected representatives that they do their jobs as a check and balance? Some of us do but we are a minority. The majority continue to think that either politics has little to do with their day to day lives or are steeped in a media culture that has little to do with objective reality. As long as we continue to tolerate the current state of affairs, we all remain complicit with them.
I live in Alabama. I know that someone with my way of seeing the world is distinctly in the minority. After all, the great achievements of our state legislature this session appear to be abstinence only sex education, officially changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and displaying the 10 commandments in schools. But in my travels around the state and my spending time with people of a very different background than mine (courtesy of my VA house calls), I know we have more in common than we think. It’s just a matter of identifying those shared ideals and using them to communicate so that we can respect the differences and learn to live with each other. The biggest barrier is the 24/7 news cycle with its deluge of infotainment untethered from reality. To me, that’s the issue we most have to grapple with if we’re going to move this country forward.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 