a poor player

Dunkirk NY – The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. So wrote Henry David Thoreau in 1854 in his famous tome on simple living, Walden. On this Thanksgiving eve, I wonder if people are eager to talk about what they are thankful for because so much of the rest of their lives has this quiet desperation about it.

I count myself among those about whom Mr. Thoreau is speaking. But I wonder if, when he talks about despair, he is talking about personal despair, or the fact that a person can despair for people and conditions around him.

I think the cause of my own internal despair is the continuing and seemingly unstoppable cultural slide into mediocrity. I do not know how to stop this slide, and even if I did, I do not think I have the talent or ability to do so. The onslaught of cultural mediocrity is so massive and so intense that I have no words left to describe it.

Reading the facts from the NEA Cultural Workforce Forum has given me this renewed sense of despair, along with various other theatre news this week. Some of these facts I had already known, and nothing can cause despair more than facts. Here are a few culled from Ian’s post on the forum:

• US artists are highly concentrated in urban areas; a fifth of them reside in just five metropolitan regions. This causes some despair for those working for a return to grassroots community arts: how ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?
• The unemployment rate of artists rose twice as fast during the current recession as that of the overall workforce. This means it will take twice as long for artists to recover financially.
• They are more educated than the overall workforce, but do not earn as much compared to those with comparable education levels. This is a great marketing statistic for recruiting undergraduates to study the arts, no?
• Artists’ geographic distribution by state is quite unequal, with New York and California reporting more than twice the number of artists per capita than the average. In other words, flyover country has been practically abandoned by artists.

That’s just for openers. Here are the economic stats for you:

• Two-thirds hold at least one job in addition to art-making.
• Two-thirds made less than $40,000 in 2008. (ed – presumably before taxes)
• Artists who spent all of their time on art-making (as opposed to other jobs) had the highest overall income on average (an interesting result, though not one that implies a causal relationship).
• Half reported a decrease in art-related income over the past year.
• 40% report not having adequate health care.
• Artists use the internet for many things, but using it to sell their art is surprisingly not that common.
• Despite all this, 75% think it’s an inspiring time to be an artist.

What is most despairing is the final bullet point, that the vast majority of artists, despite the economic realities cited above, still think it’s an inspiring time to be an artist. What’s despairing about this point is its utter delusional quality. If artists have become so delusional, how can one hope for a victory against the rising tide of mediocrity?

Want more? Perhaps most despairing of all to me, the educational bullets:

• One of the most surprising findings was that schools themselves, for the most part, have no idea how many of their alumni end up in the arts. Collectively, they only even had email addresses for barely more than half of their graduates, and 20% of those bounced back undeliverable.
• A postcard was sent to those without an email address, but less than 1% of recipients took the survey as a result.
• Among the respondents, those who had become professional artists were more likely to hold multiple jobs. 58% had three or more.
• The survey saw some extremely polarized responses. 95% of respondents reported satisfaction with the artistic training they’d received. Yet only 37% felt that their programs had given them adequate leadership training, and just 3% felt that they had been well prepared in financial matters. This despite the fact that more than 40% of graduates started their own businesses.
• Half said that student loan debt had influenced their career choices.
• Of the nonprofessional artist graduates, 44% said that they continue to practice their art in some fashion. (All bolding mine).

So to sum this up, schools have no idea whether or not their curricula or educational methods actually work based on any data about their graduates; students are clearly confused about how much they enjoyed their education as opposed to how useful it was (3 jobs?); and we do not know what the phrase “in some fashion” actually means (do they do community theatre? sing at the local church on Sunday? sing in the shower? paint landscapes for the local coffeehouse?)

In reading over these statistics yesterday and today, and then contemplating the billions of dollars spent on mediocre art and entertainment such as one can find in the movies and on television (not to mention the theatre), I find the overall picture bleak and despairing. It affects me personally because I spend so much time educating artist hopefuls. What kind of wisdom can one possibly impart?

Since Thoreau started all this, perhaps I should let him finish with another quote from Walden:

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man–you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind–I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the  enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

-twl