Introduction
Let me begin by assuring you that this will not be a thoroughly-researched, learned treatise on this (or any other) topic.  There comes a time in our lives when we begin to develop a sense of our strengths and weaknesses.  Research and learned treatises do not fall in my list of strengths.

It is probably of some value to address the issue of the title of my presentation.  To begin with (and this is something of an inside joke among academics) I deserve some credit for having come up with a title that does not include a colon.

If I have learned nothing else in my years working in and teaching about arts management, it is how to craft a marketable title.  The difficulty is always to be found in delivering on the promise of any marketing ploy.  So let me clarify what it is I intend to talk about so that, before I really begin, any of you who feel woefully misled by my title can choose to leave and there need be no hard feelings on anyone’s part.

Saving Our Lives
One might well ask what I mean by "saving our lives."  Mine is a two-fold concern.  The more obvious one is that life, over the course of the last 150 years, has become increasingly dangerous for those of us who live in the United States.  The same could be said about any part of the Western world, but I am focusing here upon our own country.  From the lynchings of blacks in the South, to the political assassinations of the ‘60’s, and to more contemporary carjackings, abortion clinic bombings, schoolyard killings, road rage, and the recent murders of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student in Laramie, Wyoming, and James Byrd, Jr., the black man dragged behind the pickup truck in Jasper, Texas, it is clear that we live in a dangerous society.  We are in trouble.

Now don’t try to get ahead of me.  I am not going to say that things would be better if we all went to the symphony more often.  At least not exactly.

Religious conservatives claim that the fault for all of this lies in a breakdown in morals, a breakdown in the family structure.  It is certainly difficult to disagree with that assessment.  But there is more to it than that.  In addition to the breakdown in the family, there has been a breakdown in the neighborhood.  Garrison Keilor has said that no one does anything really wrong in a small town because too many people are watching.  While it is a funny thing to say, there is much that is true in that.  In my first decade living in Winston-Salem, I lived in a nice neighborhood where I eventually got to know three families?but not very well.  That small number is not solely the result of my being anti-social.  We no longer have habits of being neighborly.  Some in the South blame air conditioning; others blame busy, over-scheduled lives.  But the end result is that we do not know people the way we once did.  People who know one another look out for each other; people who don’t do not.  That is what is meant by the African expression, "It takes a village to raise a child."

This leads us to what I would suggest are two, related common threads linking the terrors of the modern era.  All of the random (or coolly calculated) acts of violence I mentioned before happened because of anonymity?anonymity of an individual and collective anonymity of a group or class of people.  It is very difficult to maintain one’s prejudices about a group when you get to know an individual member of that group.  When a student I like confesses to me that she is a Republican, it shakes my world-view to the core, but it causes me to listen more carefully.  We are in trouble because we don’t know each other.

The other thread is that the perpetrators of these acts do not have a fully formed sense of themselves.  The cry that "I was just following orders" comes from an individual without a functioning value system?a value system that would force him or her to stand up and say, "No, I am not going to shoot those people."  The blind rage that accounts for most of the violence to which I have pointed comes from a parallel lack of self-worth; a lack that acts its desparation out upon anonymous representatives of any group that can be blamed for the individual’s difficulties.  We are in trouble because we do not know ourselves.

My second "saving our lives" concern is a less immediate one than avoiding violent death.  Yet it is one with which most people can identify.  In the nineteenth century, Thoreau said that most men lead lives of quiet desperation.  I think there would be little argument with the proposition that today, for most of us, our lives do not possess the richness which we might want.  While this aspect of "saving our lives" may not have the urgency of rescue from physical death, it is perhaps the more important of the two concerns because it has a direct impact upon each of us as we sit here today.  Even today, in a time when the arts are under-valued, I do not believe I need to present a case for the potential which the arts possess to make our individual lives richer.

I have now spoken for several minutes on topics for which I have no academic training.  The historians, psychologists, and sociologists among you will have to forgive me.  And please hold your brickbats for a private session at the next faculty forum.  But, at least to a lay person, the dangers of our society do seem to be linked in a significant way to our lack of knowledge about ourselves and the groups of people with whom we come into contact.

Nature of Art
Having made a case for the "save our lives" portion of my title, let me describe what sorts of arts I am suggesting we reclaim in order to make our lives better.  There is much that is art: country fiddling, quilt-making, "Your Cheatin’ Heart", "Ana Ng", Frasier, "Ode on a Grecian Urn", Romeo and Juliet, the Eroica Symphony, Swan Lake, and the Mona Lisa.  "Art" is a very big tent.  All are valuable for something; but not all of them serve us equally well in better knowing ourselves and others.

Some arts are participatory; others are "spectator arts."  In general, the participatory arts, by forcing us to think about the process of creating them and what it is that we want to "say" with them, are excellent means of helping us better know ourselves.  Since they also provide us with a positive sense of accomplishment (at least eventually), they help us to feel more secure, more fulfilled in that knowledge.  So, yes, the world would be a safer place if we all made more quilts . . . or poems or sculptures.

Some arts are "foreground" arts; others are less demanding of our attention.  My arts management students are well aware of my arbitrary dichotomization (I’m a professor, you expected at least one long made-up word didn’t you?) of the arts as being reflective or visceral.  Some arts have an intent of edifying their perceivers, making them better people; others are designed primarily to entertain.  Some focus on depth of content, having much to offer every time you experience them anew; others focus on immediacy of impact, perhaps sacrificing content for gut-level stimulation.  Some arts require real effort to get out of them all that they have to offer; others can be appreciated with ease.  The former type I call "reflective" because they demand that you reflect upon them to gain the most benefit from what they have to offer.  The latter I call "visceral" because they grab you from the first.  Reflective works have staying power; visceral works have great impact, but can often fade quickly.  The greatest art has traits of both.

I always ask my students which type would be easier to sell.  They never fail to give the correct answer.  Of course the visceral arts are the ones that sell first.  They are intended to make a big impact upon people and they place few demands upon them .  (I hasten to add that this does not make them bad, just different.)  It should also come as no surprise that it is the reflective arts about which I am talking this afternoon.  It is those arts which help us come to a better understanding of ourselves and can lead us to greater understanding of others as well.  It is those arts which can best serve the end of "saving our lives."

Recently, I was reading the transcript of an interview with Rigoberta Menchú Tum, the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who won the prize for her work in promoting human rights for the indigenous peoples of Guatemala.  She is no arts advocate.  However, she did say of Guatemala that "in the urban areas, the violence, prostitution, drugs, the pain of the orphans is growing.  There are orphans who were orphans 15 years ago and today they are teenagers.  Many of the orphans found the right road, which meant painting, making music, going to school, being an artist, sewing clothes, or finding other positive ways to survive."  This human rights activist has an intuitive understanding of the vital role the arts can play in making human lives better.

For anyone taking notes, I am talking today about "saving our lives"?that is, improving civility and human decency in our society, by bringing participatory arts activity and reflective arts experiences into the mainstream of life of more and more people.  That is not the sum total of what the arts have to offer, nor, it can be argued, even the most important function that they have.  It is, however, that about which I am speaking today.  Those of you who were hoping that I would talk about something else are now free to leave.

The Lesson of History
In an attempt to concisely frame my central argument, allow me to quote myself: "We need art?music, dance, theater, literature, painting, drawing, sculpture.  Individuals need art, communities need art?to form the center of gravity which can hold us together in the midst of chaos."

The clearest indication of the truth of this assessment is the omnipresence of art in human cultures.  Cave paintings, creations stories or dances, and music around the campfire are part of our collective human heritage, from the beginning of sentient time.  Always and everywhere the arts have been the key to understanding a society.  The arts have been where a society’s soul lives.

But what has been the nature of that art? It has been an expression of the experience?personal and collective?of the community from which it came.  It has often been an immediate response to the current situation.  In general, it has been participatory; but even when there was a virtuoso performing, he or she was giving voice to the group’s collective consciousness.

 The Western Disconnect
If the arts are indeed so essential to humanity, one might well ask, why is there any need for a presentation about "reclaiming" the arts.  There should not be any need to "reclaim" something which is supposedly pervasive in human society.

In Western culture, three trends have worked together to lead us away from an easy prevalence of reflective artistic expression.  First, from the Middle Ages there has been an increasing separation between practitioners of art and their audience.  This seems to parallel early Christian theology that God had to be approached by the priests for the people, but that is, perhaps, putting too much emphasis on an extraneous point.  Regardless of that, we have become a culture of observers of reflective art far more than participants in it.  There is an element of participation in sports and physical activity in both children and adults, although health advocates say that it is inadequate; the percentage of participation in the arts is far smaller.

Second, in the West, the arts infrastructure has been based upon class distinctions.  "Art", at least the reflective art of the Western European tradition, was (and perhaps is) not really for all.  It is a product of a class and economic system in which great power?religious, political, or economic?was in the hands of a very few.  This, coupled with inexpensive artistic labor, created a class of arts specialists?practitioners separated out from the society of all but their patrons.  The observer art which resulted from this system has been funded and supported by that monied elite who have for a millenium paid for play.  This focus of resources on the art of the few has pulled at least some support away from what might have gone toward more egalitarian artistic expressions, leaving "the rest of us" in the lurch.

Third, the triumph of rationalism in Western culture, which some date to the split in 1054 A. D. between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, has led to an increasing marginalization of art and of all things non-logical.  While in Europe there is some history of support for and appreciation of the arts, even there, the work of a great composer or painter is generally seen as secondary in its relevance to the life of a nation than its scientific or technological accomplishments (although I continue to be impressed at seeing Debussy’s face on French currency.  When might we expect to see Aaron Copland on the twenty dollar bill?)  There is a subtle and often unconscious denigration of the arts when compared with "important" enterprises like medical research.

Disconnect in the U. S.
In the United States, the Western disconnect with the arts has been exacerbated by our history.  We are a nation populated not by the elite but by the "poor, the tired, the huddled masses yearning to be free."  This is not the group which was the prime sponsor of the reflective arts in Europe.  In addition, we had little labor specialization and only a fledgling economic class system compared with Europe.  That is, there was not the huge disparity in wealth and power from top to bottom among free citizens that existed there.

However, toward the end of the 19th century, with the "triumph" of the Industrial Revolution, we in this country began to also have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.  The wealthy often patterned their lives upon the models of wealth in Europe.  It is revealing that this era, in which our nation’s class structure most closely paralleled the class structure of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, is the era in which the great arts institutions of the United States were born.  The arts systems which were established were based upon European examples.  For instance, the Boston Symphony, founded in 1881 was, until the early 20th century, supported by a single patron, Henry Lee Higginson.

The age of the Robber Baron did not, however, last long.  With the coming of the income and inheritance taxes in the early part of this century, this vast wealth became more dispersed and so, the role which individual patrons traditionally assumed was passed on to institutions?not-for-profit corporations?which, as corporate entities, carry out the function of those patrons.

The U. S. Today
So what is the "state of the arts" in the U. S. today?  Louis Harris, a pollster with a long history of avid support for the arts regularly conducts and publishes a poll about attitudes of U. S. citizens toward the arts.  His results are always cheering to the arts community because they indicate broad support for and participation in the arts.  However, careful examination of the poll indicates that some of the questions are designed to contribute a positive spin to the results.  As an example, the latest poll indicates that 86% of us participate in one or more arts disciplines.  That is a surprising and heartening number.  Upon reading the questions, one sees that two of them may well skew the final tally.  The questions include "Do you participate in photography?" and "Do you participate in dance, ballet, modern dance, aerobics, or jazz dancing?"

A more telling and less publicized finding of this Harris Poll is that only 31% of the population would "very much" miss the arts if none were available in their community.  Accepting the fact that that is probably a high number, given the poll’s slant, it is more in keeping with what those of us who observe the arts sense.  In addition, a good indicator of the public’s view of the arts was to be seen surrounding the effort made to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts.  There was virtually no political price to be paid for opposing the NEA.  Only those opposing the NEA were able to make the NEA a campaign issue.  It was not a groundswell of grassroots public opinion that saved the agency.

Perhaps the best demonstration of the current marginalization of the arts (and the real place of the arts in our society) is the fact that within the last five years, from Tim Taylor on Tool Time to headache remedy commercials, attending the opera, symphony, or ballet has become at best a joke and at worst a cause for physical discomfort.

I will admit that I am painting a purposely negative picture in stating the case.  There is much positive to be said about progress in this realm and prospects for the future.  I overstate to make a point.  Simply put, the bulk of our population does not view the arts as central to their lives.

Reclaiming the Arts: To Save Our Future
The work of the arts community must be to help us as a nation reclaim the arts and what they can do for us. In educating our children, the arts are gradually coming into their own after decades of neglect and "frillification".  Through some well-organized public relations efforts, the public seems to be developing a sense that the arts are important to education.  I applaud the on-going research into the beneficial roles which the arts can play in educating young people.  The tangible results of this growing understand, however, remain to be seen.

The studies of Harvard educator Howard Gardner indicate that there are a wide variety of types of intelligence and that most of them are artistic in nature.  He has shown that we have been limiting the accomplishments of students by focusing on only two of those intelligences?linguistic and mathematical.  Gardner’s work supports the idea that the arts provide a invaluable resource in education’s array of learning tools.

In addition, of course, the arts are excellent sources of primary information about history and cultures and should be supported as such in any educational enterprise.  Moreover, what some educators refer to as the psychosocial benefits of the arts in education?encouragement of teamwork or the realization that hard work can lead to success?are invaluable lessons uniquely taught by the arts.  Music and theater, in particular, have the power to bring together, in a common cause, children from vastly different walks of life.  And they do this work in collaboration with an adult who participates with them in the enterprise.  Next fall my stepson enters the Downtown Middle School, where every sixth-grader plays in the band every day.  My head does not know whether the lives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold would have been any different if they had had such opportunities.  My gut is sure.

U. S. education needs much help.  The arts can be a significant part of improving that education on a wide range of levels.  We must reclaim the arts to save our future.

Reclaiming the Arts: To Save Our Society
The United States is unprecedented in world history for the diversity of peoples and cultures which call this nation home.  It is certainly a strength, at least potentially.  However, we are suffering the birth pangs of awareness of that diversity, and it is proving to be unsettling for many.  The differences which should be the source of creativity which launches us to new greatness are seen by many as a threat.  The differences will not go away.  They must be understood for their value.  Here the arts have the potential to play a vital role in leading our country into the next millenium.  The arts, as the best expression of what another culture means, can help us see things through others’ eyes in ways that nothing else can.

The classic Billie Holiday song "Strange Fruit" is a case in point.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves
And blood on the roots
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
The gentle scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
And the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is the fruit, for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to dry out
Here is the strange and bitter crop

This understated description of one of the horrors of our century allows us, in however small a way, to approach empathy about an experience which would be unfathomable in any other manner.

One need only listen to a few moments of African drumming to understand that the music of Western culture is, in comparison, rhythmically illiterate.  This is not a denigration of Western culture, but a window into the greatness of another.

As we move into the next millenium, to be healthy, U. S. society must learn to appreciate and value the diversity of cultures represented in this land.  The arts present us with the best means of doing so.  The alternative?fragmentation, violence and increased conflict?will inevitably lead to our decline.  We must reclaim the arts to save our society.
 

Reclaiming the Arts: To Save Our Selves
For each of us as individuals, the arts, particularly participatory arts, must be reclaimed to help us live more fully.  Hermann Hesse, in his novel Narcissus and Goldmund, critiqued the rationalist path that Western societies have chosen.  His character Narcissus says to Goldmund, the artist:

"Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are almost always superior to us creatures of the mind. . . .  You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel.  Whereas we creatures of reason, we don’t live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to rule and guide you.  Yours is the plenitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art.  Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas.  You are in danger of drowning in the world of senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void.  You are an artist; I am a thinker."

Hesse overstates his case, but in choosing to downplay the importance of the arts to a well-lived life, we do lose much of value.  "Suffocating in an airless void" does seem much like living "lives of quiet desperation." Julia Cameron in a recent book, The Artists Way, suggests that while Aristotle said the unexamined life is not worth living, an equal point can be made that the unlived life is not worth examining.  The arts are especially well-suited for providing us means to live fuller, richer lives.

Even spectator arts can do much to help enable us to grow.  The capacity of the arts to uplift us, to make us reach for things greater than we would otherwise attempt, makes us better people.  In Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities  Sydney Carton’s thoughts as he nears the end of his life form one of literature’s greatest inspirational messages.  A victim of the French revolution, as he is going to the guillotine in Paris, voluntarily, to save the life of another, these are his thoughts:

"I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.

"I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more.  I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name.  I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. . . .

"I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence.  I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day.  I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.

"I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine.  I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his.  I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away.  I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place?then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement?and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

"It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done.  It is a far, far better rest to which I go than I have ever known."

It is difficult to be unmoved, having read or heard those words.

In addition, when we see a painting, read a poem, or hear a song which expresses how we feel, even when we did not know that was what we were feeling, we are enriched by a fuller awareness of our own nature.  Sometimes it is reflection upon the familiar, the mundane that opens our hearts to better understand ourselves and others.  Years ago, I found a poem by Emily Wilson which expressed a very common phenomenon in an uncommonly clear way.  I set that poem to music and, each time it has been performed, at least one person comes up to me afterward acknowledging that the lives of people to whom they were close had been captured.  In their eyes I can see that their lives had been changed, however slightly, by the hearing.  The power is much less in the music here than in the words.

In southern towns I know
unmarried sisters live together
in the family home.  Nurse Mother
in a long sickness, tend the graves.

They look enough alike to be sisters,
and wear their hair back in a bun, and
a blue dress with a white lace collar.

Marie and Suzanne; Edwinna and Rose;
Therese and Pearl: sisters who played
dolls together all their lives and keep
them now in the china closet.

This is the way we entertained when
Mother was alive.  This is the way
we went to church with Poppa.  This
is the way the world was.

They sleep side by side in the bed
they were born in, and side by side
they wake to the other’s need.

When one has bad dreams, it’s of the
other’s dying first.  Each says her
prayers and asks to be the first to go.

  by Emily H. Wilson

To avoid suffocating in an airless void; to live our lives with something better than quiet desperation, we must reclaim the arts to save our selves.

Conclusion
Today I have said nothing about "how."  It should be clear that the how is not  the same old approaches, the same old solutions.  The way things have been done has led to the way things are.  The ultimate hows?the means, the methods?are fodder for an entirely different talk and are the raw material for strategic planning sessions of arts groups across the country.  My job here has been to address the why.

Those of us who are artists know that this afternoon I have been speaking about only one part of the value of the arts for us individually and for us as society.  At the risk of repeating myself, I must say again that the benefits of which I have spoken here may not be the most important aspect of the arts for us as human beings.  However, if we were to find a way to avail ourselves of just these benefits, how much better our lives would be!

We live in a physically dangerous time.  Laramie, Wyoming, Jasper, Texas, and the killing fields that some of our nation’s schools have become attest to that fact.

We live in a psychologically dangerous time.  Depression and discontent abound.  We are suffering from the chaos of alienation?from self and others.

The arts do have the potential to heal rifts and bring understanding across disparate cultures.  Much of the discontent we feel in our own lives comes from not understanding and valuing ourselves, and the arts have the power to address those needs.

Other realms, most notably religion, are acknowledged for their role in addressing these problems.  The arts’ historic (and pre-historic) role as a resource for promoting civic and individual mental health, for a variety of reasons, has been largely unrecognized in Western culture.

We need art.  Individuals need art, communities need art?to form the center of gravity which can hold us together in the midst of chaos."

We must reclaim the arts to save our future.  We must reclaim the arts to save our society.  We must reclaim the arts to save our selves.

It is time for us as a society to put the arts back at the center?the source of our civic campfire.  It is time for us to reclaim the arts to save our lives.