I'd make a lousy agitator. When a polarizing issue pops up my first instinct is to seek détente as I rotate the thing around to see as many facets as possible. I'm not one for carving out a position then defending it stoutly against all assailants. It should not be surprising, therefore, that I am neither Democrat nor Republican. I can see merit in some of the positions—such as they are—of both sides.
The New York Times is running a doefully Henny-Penny-ish article about European nations cutting funding to the arts. The article is far from multifaceted; the tone is eschatological and the mood fatalistic. One is expected to tut-tut, sigh, and speak in mournfully whispered tones to one's Sunday brunch companion about what a shame this all is and how culture was always such an important part of your upbringing and how the folks used to take the kids to see Leonard Bernstein or The Nutcracker or Disney on Ice once a year. My immediate reaction to the article: oh, come on. It's not as simple and one-sided as all that.
Yet I recognize that my reactions are governed by my relative enthusiasm, or lack of same, for certain artistic endeavors. When the article bewailed the $9 million dollar shortfall at La Scala due to decreased funding by the Italian government, the first thing that popped into my mind was big f'ing deal. No tears from this crocodile about opera companies. Part of that stems from my overall indifference to musical theater of all kinds, opera in particular. But only part. When the San Francisco Opera House was re-opened after the pounding it took from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, I was invited to join a group of folks for a tour of the renovated facility. I left revolted, disgusted, and angry—also ashamed, for the first time in my life, of being part of the so-called "cultural" community. What I saw was decadence, arrogance, and obnoxiously conspicuous consumption, all proudly pointed out by a dazzled tour guide who saw absolutely nothing wrong in spending thousands of dollars on a custom-made hat for a single extra to wear in a single scene in a single opera, nothing absurd about a PH-balanced laundry or costumes made of expensive fabrics or wigs made of human hair. All to produce what are mostly penny-dreadful potboilers set to childish and banal music. No. I weep not for opera.
My immediate concern went to small orchestras and chamber ensembles. That's the instrumentalist in me piping up to be heard. I may be indifferent to the notion of a bellowing two-ton Tessie obliged to don cheap Walmart panties under her brocade Traviata dress, but I do care about a well-trained and expert violinist forced to play crap just to make ends meet, all because the government funding for the Gersteiner Kammerorkester dried up and ticket sales just can't cut it.
Yet I can't keep from thinking (here's another facet) that a shakeup just might be beneficial over the long haul. The arts go through cycles: periods of quiescence are followed by times of growth, sometimes explosive, followed by decadence and then a retreat back into quiescence. The ganglia and nexus points change over time. Vienna was the heart of the musical world once, but no more. Paris, seething center of new music in the 1920s and 1930s, has given way to New York—not all that long ago little more than a hick outpost. England was once "The Land Without Music" but experienced a 20th century renaissance that returned Henry Purcell's homeland to its rightful place in world music. Money moves around, and the arts follow the money.
An earnest young hopeful once asked financier J. P. Morgan for insight on the stock market. "It will fluctuate," answered Morgan. That's the skinny on the arts scene as well: it will fluctuate. It will change, move, grow, shrink, boom, bust, advance, retreat. No arts center will remain so indefinitely. It doesn't really take all that much to nourish a flourishing cultural environment, just as it doesn't really take all that much to kill it off. Faced with the choice between sausages and symphonies, people usually opt for the sausages. However, it doesn't have to be an either-or choice; we can have our sausages and hear them too, so to speak. The trough may have become shallower, but it isn't empty. At least not yet.