Redtree Times

Time Patterns– At West End Gallery

The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job. That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people. It can affect people so that they are changed… because people are changed by art – enriched, ennobled, encouraged – they then act in a way that may affect the course of events… by the way they vote, they behave, the way they think.

― Leonard Bernstein

This is not meant to be a political post and I will try to not veer into rhetoric. But, as I have pointed out in the past, everything ultimately is political in some way.

I have been thinking lately about the difference between the two presidential candidates. Not the obvious things. Those are too glaringly obvious in almost every way to go unnoticed. I don’t have to go into detail here. You see and know. Even those people who say they don’t know Kamala Harris can see the differences.

And I am not talking about gender or skin color.

The difference that sticks out for me is a little less obvious. It is something that the felonious former president*** lacks, at least in my observations. And it makes me wonder if this particular deficit is a bond between him and his most ardent followers.

What I see him lacking is a sense of art. He is a person who has obviously never felt nor been changed by art. He has seemingly never felt the communion that occurs between someone and any particular piece of art that stirs something deep within them.

For him, art is like everything else in his world–a transactional tool or commodity, something to be used to gain something tangible for himself alone. When he encounters art, it is to be used, not experienced or felt with awe or joy.

There is not art for art’s sake in his worldview.

You could see it in the years he was in office. There was no music in the White House. No celebrations of music and culture at the Kennedy Center. It was a time when the titular leader of our nation refused to honor the arts because its purpose and meaning both evaded him and failed to serve him.

It was a time devoid of art and joy for us a nation.

And that begs the question: Is that same deficit of feeling for art one of the unifying bonds between him and his most slavish followers? Have they never been changed by art, never responded to deeper feelings that art offers? Have they not seen themselves in, and been transformed by, the words, images or music of others?

And if they do lack this relationship with art, does it make them resent those who openly experience and feel art, seeing them as being somehow elite?

I don’t know that there is an adequate answer or if this is even a legitimate question. I just find myself wondering. It seems like it could be so.

But again, I don’t know.  I just feel that art, while it may not end the suffering felt by so many, expands the experience one feels of this world, creating new avenues of reality. And denying art limits our possibilities as humans. Much like the sage words at the top from Leonard Bernstein.

One guy’s opinion…