Straight From The Arts

Random thoughts about watching and working in the arts, from HMS Media co-founder/executive producer Scott Silberstein

August 27, 2011

Watch The Skies

“Space,” writes poet, novelist and actress Vanna Bonta, “is as infinite as we can imagine, and expanding this perspective is what adjusts humankind's focus on conquering our true enemies, the formidable foes: ignorance and limitation.”  Having the arts in our lives works pretty well, too.

Tonight, when you go to the grand finale of the Chicago Dancing Festival at the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park (and why shouldn’t you? It’s going to be a beautiful night to be outdoors, the show’s going to be great and like the rest of the festival the show is free), make sure you look up at the stars.

Not for nothing are artists and scientists often described as having their collective heads in the clouds; a good thing, because that’s where we find our inspiration. There are those for whom balancing financial statements and winning elections seem more important than exploring our universes – the one out there, and the one inside all of us – but as Robin Williams says in “Dead Poets Society,” business, medicine and law are all noble professions, necessary to sustain a way of life, but art and poetry are what we stay alive for.

There was a time when our statesmen were also grand thinkers, explorers and experimenters (thanks, Dr. Franklin). Today, that’s left to the artists and the scientists, and both tend to be stereotyped and ostracized (and, if we’re talking public policy, defunded). Interesting, isn’t it, that within the rise of people who talk with fire-breathing certainty about Heaven, many are leading a charge to quash the efforts and ideas of those turning to the actual heavens for guidance. For those people, for whom I feel genuinely sorry, what we think we now know, and what we currently own, are far more important than what we haven’t yet figured out or where we have yet to explore. What would those people tell the researchers who, through by answering the unanswered questions and asking the unasked ones, came up with the ideas that led to the creation of the computer, the transistor, the laser, the Web? None among these scientific pioneers sat down and thought, “If I can just invent a transistor, then someday the world will have an mp3 player, which will sell billions and make me rich.” No, they were simply physicists, whose ambitions were simpler and grander than that. They were people who started with this essential admission: “I don’t know.” Followed by, “But what if…” That’s the magic formula: start with humility, proceed to discovery.

Not knowing is pretty wonderful. Some find that scary, but in the sciences and the arts, that’s how we live. It’s where faith comes from. I think people instinctively look to the heavens not because that’s where God lives (surely God would be everywhere, right, not just up there, but also down there, and over there), but more because it’s by looking to the stars that we remind ourselves how much there is yet to learn, how much more there is to explore, and how miraculous it is that we have the capacity to wonder.

That’s why I’ve always loved that the Chicago Dancing Festival presents its closing night under the night skies in Millennium Park, as it will tonight in a matter of hours. What a beautiful statement. On its biggest night, the Festival lays itself at the feet of the Universe as if to say, thanks for the inspiration. And can we have some more, please, because we’re going to need it.

Like children, the dances that will be performed on the stage at the Pritzker tonight didn’t come out of nowhere, fully intact, with an instruction manual about how they should be danced and designed. They are uniquely strange and beautiful, and tend to tell their creators who they are and where they’re going with more accuracy and effectiveness than their creators do.

Scientists discover nothing without acknowledging that there’s something he they don’t know or didn’t expect, and it’s the same with artists. You’ll often hear a choreographer, a writer or a filmmaker – an honest one, anyway – say that they’re not quite sure where their work came from or how it came to be, that it came from somewhere other than themselves, or from something bigger than themselves, or through the connection with the other people in the room. One word we use for that is inspiration. Another is love.

Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson notes that nearly half of Congress is made up of lawyers, who are trained not to champion the truth but rather to argue a point of view to make it seem truthful, regardless of the truth itself. No wonder, then, that they so easily dismiss art and science, which are, at their most basic levels, about truth. It must be something like that; it can’t, for example, be about the money (no matter what they say). The amount of the recent bank bailouts exceeds the entire fifty-year budget for NASA. And when you compare the combined funding of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities with the amount of federal tax income they generate, the government’s getting better than 30-1 on their (that is to say, our) money. Add in state and local tax revenue and it’s 75-1.

No, it must be about something else. A desire to stay where we are, because the unknown is scary? A fear of the truth? An aversion to discovery? Maybe that’s it. Make people afraid of change, or of progress, of discovery – tell them they’re good enough the way they are, and anyone who says different is itching for a well-funded fight – and you’ve find a formula for entrenched positions, for power and control, which are overrated and easily lost.

To those people, I say… look up. There’s a great big sky up there that reminds that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of… well, you know the rest of that saying, right, because a great artist was inspired to think it, and then using words in a new way that hadn’t occurred to anyone before, write it, and then an actor onstage said it, and the rest of us heard it and repeated it. Of course we did; it’s a great line, and a truthful one.

No matter how uncertain these times are, comfort doesn’t come from Congress or Wall Street, nor does hope, or inspiration. It comes from the discoverers. The genius of the space program wasn’t just that we put a man on the moon, it’s that we inspired people to believe we could do something previously thought to be impossible. And the brilliance of the arts isn’t just that we create wonderful songs, plays, dances, paintings and films, it’s that they inspire people to feel and do beautiful things previously thought to be undoable.

That’s what’s being celebrated tonight in Chicago at Millennium Park. Tonight’s performance, featuring Ballet West, River North Chicago Dance Company, The Joffrey Ballet, the Martha Graham Dance Company, artists from The New York City Ballet and the Paul Taylor Dance Company, brings together artists from all over the country and audiences from all across our city. We’ll sit under the stars together. We’ll look at each other and smile. And then we will look up, and sigh.

Or, if you're not in the mood for philosophy, you can just hang out with friends, have a picnic, listen to great music and watch talented gorgeous dance. That works, too.

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