Awesome Sauce #1

I wish America would do this......

Createquity - the blog I ought to read every chance I get, but don't

As a welcome but still disheartening reminder about why good, prolific bloggers don't really have other jobs, Createquity (see updated blogroll) just put out a list of the 10 biggest arts policy stories in 2009. There are 2 reasons this is disheartening (for me) 1) there are some things on there that I didn't even know! Like Number 8. I had no idea that the two biggest west-coast funding groups were going through a leadership change! Yeah - I ought to have kept on top of that. 2) it proves that other people are doing this better, and more thoroughly than I am. Go figure.

Check it out. The list is BEAST.

Also, this quote is my life, and feels really true to me right now, for some reason.

The problem of course, as far as private funding goes, is that what billionaire wants to fund school education? Where’s the glamour in that? You don’t get your name etched in marble on the outside of a hall for that, or get invited to amazing galas, so what’s the point? That’s why I’m focusing on public and state funding — let the private funders bankroll the opry halls, if that’s where they want to hang out.

I sense that in the long run there is a greater value for humanity in empowering folks to make and create than there is in teaching them the canon, the great works and the masterpieces. In my opinion, it’s more important that someone learn to make music, to draw, photograph, write or create in any form than it is for them to understand and appreciate Picasso, Warhol or Bill Shakespeare — to say nothing of opry. In the long term it doesn’t matter if students become writers, artists or musicians — though a few might. It's more important that they are able to understand the process of creation, experimentation and discovery — which can then be applied to anything they do, as those processes, deep down, are all similar. It’s an investment in fluorescence.

It's all an investment in fluorescence. Beautiful, beautiful sentence.

Shows I want to see #536

Enron. The play.

And this is news to....

Anyone who hasn't ever bothered to learn about the dramatic side of Shakespeare.

I'm very sorry this academic is dead, and he seems like he was a really amazing guy, but his insights are really very....hmm....accepted? Understood? Been told to everyone 20 times over (hopefully). I guess the fact that he first encountered Shakespeare in a college Shakespeare course accounts for why he was so amazed that Shakespeare is really only alive when in performance. But go figure.