Last October a representative from my local cultural council asked me to review grant proposals for the Theatre and Literature panel. (There were also Music and Visual Arts panels.) I accepted readily because while I had launched proposals, I had never been at the incoming end, where they slid in over the transom. And self-interest had a part in the accepting: knowing how a grants panel divined proposals would help me write proposals that were divine.
I had a great time during the review phase. I received a fat packet stuffed with proposal copies, evaluation sheets, adjunct material, all prefaced by a delightful letter from the coördinators. I made myself my usual flagon of Vietnamese coffee, let my reading chair embrace me, carefully vetted the proposals, and made my evaluations with slow diligence. Then came the meeting of the full panel -- a delighful passel of people who talked about theatre not simply as a litany of actor-kvetches or sniping reviews but as a vital, and vitalizing, human activity. That, plus excellent wraps from a local sandwichery, made for a nourishing and productive evening (by the end, we had given some $12,000 to artists -- dispensing largesse like this can be very uplifiting).
One final meeting, where all three panels converged to review the final proposals and to self-congratulate -- and here comes the crux of this essay. At one point during the evening a member of the Music panel, seconded by members of the Theatre and Visual Arts panels, voiced a tension that had been gently disturbing the otherwise genial tone of the meeting. The Musician noted that almost all the approved proposals were for projects with some kind of outward public show built into them: a musical performance done for sixth graders, an art exhibition to travel the senior centers, a theatre script on domestic violence to generate awareness, and so on. While he made a nod to "how important it is that we use public arts money to build future audiences and an appreciation for the arts, etc.", all that was simple throat-clearing to his real point: why can't the cultural council give out money to individual artists so that they can simply do their art, without necessarily having to "publicize" themselves?
The Theatrician piped in an agreement, arguing that the kind of work she does (much of it solo and self-scripted) requires time, time, time, which, because it is equal to money, requires money to buy it. Art and its creation, she said, did not always have to be a public process, and that resources should be allocated that support the private and intimate nature of the artistic process. The Visual Artisan agreed, though from a slightly different angle. He asked why visual artists should have to write proposals at all, since these right-brained creatures, when required to "explain" their art, are being asked to be linear when their nature is gestaltic. "Do we ask a writer to send in a portfolio of photographs to get a grant?" he asked, to general laughter.
The coördinators, obviously used to this kind of talk, patiently explained that because they were disbursing public money with a mandate that it produce public benefits, they could not set aside funds for support that did not have, in essence, a direct public payback. The Musician answered that it might be worth having the council's board discuss the possibility of individual artistic support that was not linked to a publicly measurable outcome, which the coördinators duly noted in their notes. The discussion moved on.
I, however, did not move on quite as quickly because something like the odor of entitlement lingered in the air, and the odor rankled me. Here were three people, all noted in their fields (though perhaps not at levels they hoped for), who had done whatever struggles they needed to do to create what they had created, asking to be "kept," to a certain degree, by public money because, as they implicitly argued, they deserved it by the very nature of their being artists (and artistic being). I just couldn't buy it, not only because it smacked too much of whining but also because it completely ignored that they were both artists and citizens, both private and public people. I made a note to think about this later and then caught up with the rest of the evening.
Here are my thoughts. I do not claim depth or innovation in any way. If anything, they reflect an on-going struggle in myself in trying to balance my responsibilities as an artist and as a citizen as well as traverse the friction between competing definitions of "artist": on the one hand as private creator, on the other hand as historical actor and political animal.
First, it seemed to me that the troika's argument was based only on a half-definition of "artist," the part that stressed the uniqueness, if not sacredness, of the lone artist struggling in some physical or spiritual atelier to shape a voice, articulate a vision. But artists are also citizens, members of a political community, with all of the rights, responsibilities, and annoyances that go with that role, and I think a fuller, if not full, definition of "artist" has to include this element as well because citizenship, whether they would acknowledge this or not, presents a different theory of how to be an artist.
Citizenship (at least in its democratic Platonic definition, which I know is not equal to actual practice) is outward, about acting not only in one's own self(ish)-interest but also, in essence, in the interest of strangers, people not known personally but who nevertheless need to be protected and promoted as matter of principle. Instead of interiority, the "citizen as artist" is asked to re-create the world as a public gesture, as a historical act, in common with others. Instead of the kind of unreined freedom demanded by the artist, the citizen creates through limitations imposed by coöperation. Instead of art being used to tell people what is wrong with them (coming from the notion that artists, at least in America, need to oppose a philistine culture to be authentic), art is used to give some body to shared values, to common aspirations, even to unfilled promises.
But as I read over what I just wrote, I realize how adversarial and inaccurate it is because it employs "either/or" thinking. "Citizen/artist" and "artist/citizen" do not describe exclusive poles but instead reflect, in shorthand, a complex human journey, a back-and-forthness between different realms of imagination and action, as well as a constant balancing of visions and actions. This was the missing half of the troika's definition. They argued strongly for the half that supports their individual endeavors but not for the half that calls themselves forward as creators in the public world. They saw the "payback/playback" aspect of the funding as limiting, when I would argue the opposite: that being obliged to be an "artist-citizen/citizen-artist" actually expands one's sympathies and abilities, providing a wider palette and a sturdier canvas and a braver air to breathe.
As for the requirement that the proposal to the cultural council have some kind of "payback/playback" aspect to it did not bother me in the least. It seems only fair to me that when a pool of strangers called the "citizenry" lends me money to do some task, they have the right to have some report from me about how the money was spent, whether that report is in the form of a dry quarterly update filed with a bureaucrat, a performance to an audience in order to provoke conversation, or a workshop to teach stilting skills. The more the citizenry can share time with creators, the more those same citizens will trust artists and the more those artists will trust the creativity of their own public natures.
Some other thoughts sparked by this. One of the reasons why I think many artists in America feel marginalized is that they have, to some degree, marginalized themselves by insisting on an untrammeled freedom to create as they see fit, a conscious dissociation of themselves from any kind of community, and an inability to see themselves in service to any idea or vision other than the one generated by their own narrowly defined sense of self. (Please take off points here for over-statement and too-much generalization.) The cultural response has been, by and large, okay, go do your art -- just don't insist that we pay attention to you with time or money. And when artists do insist on having a political voice -- think Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon -- they are seen as dilettantes in the "real" world, slummers who gloss things up but do not have the weight of those who do medicine or public sanitation or foreign affairs or even clean the office buildings at night.
At a theatre conference I attended last September at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, one participant stated that artists of all stripes might want to give some serious thought about the possibility of putting their artistic powers in service to ideals other than their own drive for self-expression; he noted some of the work done by American artists in the 1930s and 1940s who allied themselves with progressive political movements, such as labor unions. I have often felt that artists need to find ways to be a more integrated part of the social flow of power and politics, not at the expense of what they want to do but as a way to infuse it with a broader horizon and reach -- in other words, how to balance on the wire strung between "artist" and "citizen."
And much of the thinking in this essay comes from changes in my own self as I grow older. For instance, the theatre work we have done with the men at Bay State Prison (see the archived InView article, "Theatre of the Oppressed with the Oppressed") has made me think deeply about questions like: What ideas or visions am I in service to? Who am I in service to? Who is my "family"? Who stands around the circle of warming fire with me? I find that my insistence on defining myself as "writer" is co-vocal with an insistence on trying to find out how my writing can be as useful and satisfying to a human being as well-made bread or a well-worn shirt.
In some ways this is simply finding new ways to "speak truth to power," something which I have always tried to do (and always done less well than I wanted). But it is a "speaking" that is depending less and less on holding up a broken mirror to "them out there" and finger-wavingly insisting that we all confront our heinous inadequacies as human beings and more on finding our affinities, bridges, stubborn pockets of good will, angels of our better nature. I want to find in me the same kinds of "multitudes" that Whitman spoke of in himself so that I can create not from feeling cabin'd and cribb'd but from a "barbaric yawp" of human recognition and struggle.
And this is not about creating pasteurized, N. Rockwell art -- harmony can be a dark business, finding affinities can cost a pound of flesh or two, and the truth of all that must be told. But in the end we all go down together, and the question becomes for artist and citizen alike: what can we do to provision that journey with as many well-baked loaves and well-woven shirts as possible? It is a composite, communal adventure, whether we acknowledge it or not -- and acknowledging it makes it that much more open, urgent, and enjoyable. My hope is that I can -- that we all can -- create an art that matches the magnitude of this journey.
(November 2000)