Christmas Time is Here

The Oxen by Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

"Now they are all on their knees,"

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

"Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,"

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

(This is going to be hard to write.)

I used to love Christmas.

I realize that I am not exceptional in this. I know others. It is a special kind of disease to love Christmas, I mean to really love Christmas. You may wonder what the symptoms are, in case you or someone you love has this disease.

Ask yourself a few questions. Have you ever made goose or plum pudding for Christmas dinner - even if you're an American? Do you have an Advent wreath in your home, which you light faithfully and appropriately? Is there a poem you simply must read every Christmas Eve? Do you know all the verses to "The First Noel"?

If you answered yes to any of the questions I've just asked, you may be infected. You may also be infected if you understand the allusions in the poem above by Thomas Hardy without having them explained to you.

The poem refers to a folk tale, still told among some, that on Christmas Eve the beasts of the farm, like those who attended the birth of Christ in the stable, kneel down at midnight to honor the newborn king. Some even say that they speak with voices like men.

Like almost every poem that I know well, I learned this one set to music. I forget the composer, but it was a really lovely setting, one that helped you understand the import of the text. We sang it in high school chorus. It's really a marvel in terms of craft, isn't it? "So fair a fancy few would weave . . . " Let that roll from your tongue a dozen times.

The story about the oxen is not in the Bible. It would hardly be out of place, though. The birth of Jesus is extraordinary, as recorded in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Divine messengers. The virgin conception. The prophetic utterances of so many characters. The birth in a stable. The appearance of the hosts of heaven to shepherds. The search for the baby by mystics from Persia. The bad king's murder of children. The flight into Egypt.

Of course, all of that pales in comparison to the central fact of the story: the infinite power and majesty of God, incarnate in a small child, to redeem a wicked people. The Word made flesh. Even as I type those words, they bring chills to my flesh and tears to my eyes.

There are stories like that all through the book. Fish swallow men whole. A nation is fed from bread that falls from the sky for forty years. Sticks turn into snakes. Rivers become blood. A shepherd boys kills a giant with a slingshot. Men are cast into a furnace and are unharmed. The dead come to life. And a prophet named Balaam does, in fact, have a donkey who speaks.

For those of you who have never truly believed these stories (or ones like them), it may all be very difficult to take in. The atheist compares them to the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, but they are something different.

One of my favorite stories is about the prophet Elisha. He angers the king of Aram, who sends an entire army to encircle his home. Elisha's servant sees the army and is terrified, and asks, "What should we do?" So the prophet prays that his servant's eyes may be opened to see things as they truly are. Then the servant looks, and the mountain behind the army is filled with the entire host of heaven, standing to protect Elisha, riding chariots of fire.

It is one of the great themes of the book: things are not as they appear. The climactic story of the Bible is, in many ways, centered on that theme. "Do you see that man there, nailed to that tree, naked, broken, bleeding, dying and being mocked by thousands? He is, this very moment, conquering death and Hell."

If you are a believer, it runs deep. C.S. Lewis wrote that every single person we see will some day, at the end of time, be transformed into something either so glorious and radiant that we would be tempted to worship, or else so hideous and wicked that we should have nightmares forever thinking about them. Paul, writing to the church in Corinth about some very nuts-and-bolts matters, says in passing, "Do you not know that you will judge angels?" He doesn't go on to explain it, he just says it. I remember sitting in church once, looking at the man in front of me, who had arrived late that morning because he had a sick cow, thinking, "This man will pass judgment on God's angels."

It's an extraordinary way to live. Believing that oxen should kneel at the stroke of midnight every December 25 does not seem ridiculous in comparison.

So, I used to love Christmas. It represented to me all the hope that I had. It represented my hope that at the end of days, all would be made right, like in the last verse of that carol:

Then louder pealed the bells more deep,

"God is not dead nor doth He sleep,

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, goodwill to men."

It represented hope that I could be different, that I could be better, that though I was beset by my own native sin, I was not what I appeared to be. I bore the imprint of God's image, the imago Dei. More, I was changed, I was a new creature. I had been raised from spiritual death, as surely as Jesus had raised his dead friend Lazarus from the tomb. I counted God my friend and death as gain. I had hope both here and hereafter.

I've always found arguments against the more fantastical elements of religion completely unconvincing. That the omnipotent God should speak worlds into being was nothing. That He should save a wretch like me was more unfathomable. Armchair agnostics sit at their laptops and ridicule the virgin birth, but they completely miss the issue. The power of the Creator of the elements to manipulate them to His will is a trifle compared to the mystery of grace.

The problem is that I know my own heart. I've known it since I was very young. I know its uncomfortable places and dark corners. I know what's under the floorboards and in the closets. Paul wrote that for those who are in Christ, old things have passed away, all things are made new. Yet my heart tells me I am just a man. Better than some, much worse than many. Son of Adam, to be sure.

I think that others would describe what has happened to me over the last couple of years as a "loss of faith." It seems like much more than that to me, much more than those three words can express. It is as though I awoke from a dream, only to discover than the world was waiting in all its ugliness and pain.

There are those, even some I count as friends, who think nothing of belittling religion and the religious. I forgive their ignorance, but it is ignorance, nonetheless, sometimes a very cruel type of ignorance. To mock that which is the very ground of being of fellow traveler in this world is callous. Strangely, I find it more painful now than when all those things were mine.

I suppose I've lost faith. I've also lost Christmas, or at least, I've lost what Christmas was to me. Tonight we're having friends for cocktails, a Christmas party. I am thankful I have that at least. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die," says the fool.

Thomas Hardy wrote another poem about Christmas called "Yuletide in a Younger World." He writes of remembering how it used to seem to him, then concludes thus:

We heard still small voices then,

And, in the dim serene

Of Christmas Eve,

Caught the far-time tones of fire-filled prophets

Long on earth unseen . . .

- Can such ever have been?

I miss those still, small voices and wonder the same. Maybe I'll make a trip through the gloom this Christmas Eve, and see the oxen kneel. Or maybe I won't and simply hope it might be so.

Form, Function, and Frank

I first heard the name Frank Lloyd Wright from a Simon and Garfunkel song. Embarassing, but true. Actually, I don't know that it's really all that embarassing. I'm a musician and an unapologetic lover of pop music as a valid art form, so it really makes sense. In any event, I had no idea who FLW was while listening to Art Garfunkel's male alto singing, "So long, Frank Lloyd Wright. All of the nights we harmonized till dawn." The chorus was particularly baffling: "Architects may come and architects may go and never change your point of view." I'm of the "get it on, bang a gong" school of pop songwriting and while I certainly believe a great song can change the world, it would probably never occur to me to write a song about an architect. I mean, unless she were a really hot architect, and even then, her work in that field would be secondary to verses about her legs or whatever.

I actually am quite embarassed to say that I matriculated for a full seven years within an hour's drive of Fallingwater, Wright's iconic masterwork, without ever having seen it. I started not to mention that, but it really does get to the essence of what I'm thinking as I write. Or maybe it's what I've not thought about very deeply over the years.

The arts philosopher Suzanne Langer wrote a wonderful (though rather difficult) book entitled Feeling and Form. She tackles the issue of the essence of each of the disciplines and I remember being quite impressed by her treatment of music when I was an undergraduate. Langer wrote that the essence of music is time, that it is, in some way, time made audible. Nietzche and Frank Zappa have said much the same thing in their own ways. As a musician, I love that. Langer argues that music is the most abstract of the arts and I think she's right. A C major chord is a set of pitches. It has no specific meaning beyond those sounds and it's actually quite a task for a composer to make those sounds have a direct analog in the "real" world. Now, if I write a song (i.e., I put words to the music), suddenly my piece is about white Christmases or doggies in windows or walking like Egyptians or whatever. It is the words telling you what the song is about though. The other arts may be abstract, but abstraction is music's default mode. It's difficult for music not to be abstract.

In many ways, architecture is the opposite of music, so much so, in fact, that some do not readily recognize it as an art form. After all, the architect is designing rooms for people to peel potatoes or use the toilet. And all of us live and work in these spaces, many of them the antithesis of beauty, elegance or affective expression.

The one thing I have always remembered about Frank Lloyd Wright from my art appreciation class was his emphasis on functionality in architecture. "Form follows function" was the dictum Wright followed, a phrase coined by his mentor Louis Sullivan. It is the one thing that has left an impression on me as I think about the arts generally, and even music specifically. It is so easy for musicians to fall into formalist traps, following a prescribed template, whether rondo form or thirty-two bar Tin Pan Alley song structures. The result is usually something inorganic (a term Wright would have undoubtedly approved), something that does not seem even authentic in itself. When you hear music where the form is an outgrowth of the expressive elements, whether Beethoven first movements with extended codas or Muddy Waters' 11- and 13-bar blues, it resonates as something that occurs almost naturally. There is something organic in these forms, the same way there is in Wright's irregular hexagons.

So today, at the inviation of our friends Rachel and Robert, my wife and I had the opportunity to tour Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was truly remarkable and left me in awe of the man. This "winter camp" was established by Wright when he was 71-years-old. He moved there largely for health reasons, but established a school of architecture that split sessions between this "campus" and the other Taliesin, in Wisconsin. He spent the first two years in a tent, literally, while his students built his home. There was no running water and no electricity for years. The facility makes use almost exclusively of natural light that comes in through canvas roofs. Bedrooms were largely open to the elements and every building is constructed with materials found mostly on the desert floor where the campus sits.

Yet the beauty of the place is truly remarkable. The way the buildings seems to rise out of mountains and incoporate the forms of the saguaro cacti and other natural elements is striking. It's not just the archiecture that adds to the beauty. Collected Asian art works, three theatres that host the performing arts, and three grand pianos (left from the nine that Wright furnished during his lifetime) give the impression that this is a place to create.

Create he did. And not alone. The school was really the brain child of Wright's wife, Olgivanna, something of an Eastern European mystic and dancer. She was Wright's third wife and thirty years his junior. They established a small community (some might say "cult") of about 70 individuals, including 30 or so apprentices, who lived and worked at Taliesin. Such was their devotion to the place, and to the man, that today 98-year-old Cornelia Brierly, one of the original members of the Taliesin Fellowship, still lives and works there. And she's not the only one of Wright's former students who has stayed on. They put on concerts and plays, cooked together and entertained guests, and visited Wright in his bedroom to borrow books and learn from his wisdom.

By the time Wright moved to Taliesin West, he had already completed one career. He was America's most prolific architect and revolutionized the form many times over with ideas great and small: Prarie Houses, car ports, "Usonian" housing, floor lighting and more. He lived in Japan for six years and designed the Imperial Hotel. He designed the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Johnson Wax building. He was controversial, abandoning one family and later living openly with his mistress. She was murdered, along with six others, by an axe-weilding servant who burned the original Taliesin to the ground. He bought ninety cars during his lifetime, opining, "Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves." He wore a suit and tie to his desert office everday, not knowing when clients might stop in. He was opinionated and perhaps arrogant. He played the piano from memory, including entire Beethoven sonatas. He reportedly told friends that had he been a musician, he would have changed music much the same way Beethoven had; he couldn't even read music. Our tour guide told us that he rejected the title "America's Greatest Architect." He preferred "The World's Greatest Architect."

I find myself tonight with two books on Frank Lloyd Wright. I'm hoping to harmonize with him, too.

The Arts & Meaning in Pain

Today I watched a setting of Euripides' Medea with 500 high school students. It was a re-imagining of the tale by the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, set in an early 20th century tea house, styled in a quasi-Kabuki manner and performed entirely in Japanese, with English subtitles. It was deeply affecting and brilliant, a perfect example of 21st century "remix" culture: the sex-roles of the patrons and geisha of the chashitsu were used to comment on Medea's frustrations as a woman in Greek society, and the uncomfortable intersection between East and West was continually highlighted, as Medea is repeatedly referred to as "Asian." Under different circumstances, this is probably what I would blog about right now.

As it is, life has chosen to interrupt art to a great extent and my experience of the play this week is probably much different than it would have been otherwise.

Although the performances were profoundly different in many ways, my mind naturally wandered to school performances by the West Virginia Dance Company, which I have seen many times. I suppose it's because they, too, often blend cultural elements to achieve a greater artistic impact. Or maybe it's just because they have performed in more West Virginia schools than probably any other arts organization in the state.

I've thought a lot about how young people respond to art. When they are very young, there is an openness that is enviable, even among those of us who spend a good deal of our time in the arts. The youngest of children have not yet learned to mask emotion or to hide with pretension and they respond to the thing itself. It's really beautiful and it's one of the reasons artists like to work with younger students.

Once students reach middle school, they're expected to behave certain ways. They are not allowed to have pure emotional responses, for any number of reasons: they are viewed as inappropriate by adults, as unsophisticated by their peers, and as unnatural in our educational system. To top it off, the arts community (and I'll include myself in this guilty number) bombards them with all these rules about how to experience and respond to art, what to wear, what to do, not to talk, when to laugh or cry, when to applaud . . . and the rules can vary widely according the whether you're watching theatre or dance, whether you're in a concert hall or a jazz club, even who else is in the audience.

Coupled with the truly limited experiences many of them have, most students are pretty uncomfortable watching a performance by the time they reach high school. I suppose it's the years I spent teaching, but I've come to expect this response and to accept it as the general order of things.

Here's something particular I have noticed: when a work of art touches a group of students on a particularly deep level, they get nervous. Just when you know they are feeling the thing the artist is giving them, they act "inappropriately." They fidget. They make disarming comments. They giggle. I've seen it time and time again, and it used to make me angry. "Why the hell can't these kids just go headlong into what is happening? Why do they have to act so damn goofy?"

I don't get angry anymore. I think I understand it somewhat better. Most of them - maybe 80% or more - aren't used to feeling this deeply. They do not have the mechanism to respond.

Most adults don't either, by the way. It's just that when teenagers feel insecure, they joke. When adults feel insecure, they just pretend they know more than they do.

I don't mean this as a judgment in any way. I think the need is clear. We need more art. The arts give us that emotional language to respond to those deep places. Some of those places are transcendent. Listening to Bach helps us feel the divine. Watching Shakespeare helps us fall in love. Some of those places are dark, part of our shadow side.

Medea, especially the production I saw today, was one of those pieces that helps us make meaning of those dark experiences in life. I'll recap the story briefly.

Medea, a princess from a foreign land, is brought to Greece after she kills her brother and helps Jason steal the golden fleece. She marries Jason and has a son by him, but the king of Corinth offers his daughter to Jason, who decides to leave Medea. Creon, king of Corinth, banishes Medea and her son because he suspects that she has powers of witchcraft. Medea hatches a plot to seek her revenge. She makes a gift of a robe and comb to her ex-husband's new bride. The bride puts both on, not knowing that they are poisoned. She dies violently and when her father, the king, comes to rescue her, he is killed, too. Medea completes her revenge by murdering her own son, leaving Jason without an heir.

The setting I saw today was performed in kabuki style. The "readers" of the play were Japanese officials visiting a tea house, while the silent "players" were the geisha who served. The subordinate role of the women is emphasized throughout, with the geisha objectified, silent and serving. The play-with-the-play shows the male officials sexually harassing the women even while they read the angry words of Medea against dominant men. The play concluded with the geisha slaughtering the male officials just as Jason discovers Medea's deeds.

It was brilliant and affecting at the deepest level. Medea's pitiable situation was presented without sentimentalism. There was real pathos and fear as she stabs her own child to death.

The students giggled.

I could feel their discomfort. For most of them, death is presented casually in video games and many films. Now, this is not a "back when I was a kid" diatribe. I actually don't think that these casual portrayals necessarily desensitize children to violence. But they do not portray the powerful emotional impact of violence the way that art does - with color, gesture, pitch, rhythm, movement, drama. You could not watch the action onstage, though it was not graphic in any way, and not feel the horror of the moment.

If we are to make meaning of all of life's experiences, we need art. The universe seems ruled by chaos. The arts - along with religion, philosophy, mathematics, science and the rest - help us make meaning of the chaos. The special role that the arts play are in making meaning of the emotional tumult of our lives.

This is the other reason I was thinking of my friends at the West Virginia Dance Company while watching the play today. One of their dancers, a beautiful young woman named Cyan Maroney, was violently murdered this week. Several of them were witnesses; all of them were a second family to her. I cannot imagine the profound pain they are feeling right now. I find myself hoping that I never know the type of psychic turmoil they have experienced in the last three days.

I only knew Cyan casually from a few introductions. I had seen her dance, though. She was dancing Anne Frank in a piece that the company was currently touring. She knew the power of the arts to bring order to all the darkness there is in the world.

How are the other dancers coping? Today, they are dancing. To those who are not artists, this probably seems strange. For those of us in the arts, we can imagine no other response. Their dance is catharsis, I am sure. But more than that, it is one way they can fight against the occasionally unbearable awfulness of the Universe, a way to scream out, "You haven't beat me yet, dammit!"

There are those who imagine that education is merely to prepare young people for a life of work, so they may go home and anesthetize themselves in the face of life's tragedy. But rather than an anesthetic life, I would suggest an aesthetic life, one that embraces the pain with the joy, knowing that it is all part of our common experience. Such a life is unimaginable without the arts.

My thoughts are with Cyan's family, along with everyone at the West Virginia Dance Company and those in the Beckley arts community who are hurting so much. I hope they find solace.

A Blog Post about Math (Please Continue Reading)

I'm relatively new to the world of Twitter. For the last several years, it just seemed to me that Twitter was Facebook for people with ADD who had shorter thoughts. I changed my mind this summer at the Teacher Leadership Institute when I learned that several of our attendees were tweeting during sessions about the content. In our infinite 20th century wisdom, members of my office scolded them and forbade these grown-ass adults from using social media on their computers during sessions.

That was really all it took to make me decide that I needed a Twitter account and that I would begin tweeting immediately. It's official: I'm a twit.

I'm using Twitter for professional reasons: all my posts are related to the arts, education, creativity, etc. My followers and my followed are made up less of my friends and more of people who have an interest in those topics. One of my favorites has been @brainpicker, Maria Popova. Her tweets are interesting, but the Brainpickings blog is even better. It's full of thoughts on the arts, culture, design, education, creativity - all those things that capture my imagination. (By the way, she tweets like she's in the throws of mania, so if you follow her, plan on having your feed filled. It's good stuff, but sometimes it's hard to keep up with it all.)

One of her tweet's this morning read: "I find it appalling that this school says artists don't need math http://j.mp/nBJfVz Creativity is in cross-pollination http://j.mp/q04y9W." (Go ahead and take a look at that first article.) It has me thinking this morning about math.

I was a singularly terrible math student. Well, not singularly. Actually, I've discovered that my experience mirrors that of many math students. During my matriculation at Daniels Elementary School, I was a pretty decent student. I liked school. I liked my teachers. Well, most of them. I had my favorite subjects (music, language, social studies) but I tried hard in all of them. In 6th grade I began struggling, just a bit, with math. Nothing too terrible mind you.

When I entered junior high school, my mother wanted my twin sister and me to be advanced in our math studies. We had both been in the "gifted program" (a topic for another post) and it was assumed that this would be of great benefit to us in our school careers. So, we did double assignments for 7th and 8th grade math that year. Now, 7th grade was an academic ebb for me. I was being subjected to the whims of puberty and my home life had gotten a little weird. School waned in importance. I still liked some subjects, but others seemed to have less and less value. Math was one of these. I struggled to finish the assignments, but made it through.

When I entered the 8th grade, I was enrolled in Algebra. Here I will confess that I have hated math ever since. I haven't just hated it though, I have been mystified by it. I have felt stupid in every single math class I have had since 8th grade, and struggled to pass them all. My test grades were horrible. I began skipping the homework, too. It was easier to have low math grades because I didn't do the homework, than to do it and let everyone know that I was really lost. I passed Algebra with a C. Geometry was a little better: B. Algebra II: C. Trigonometery: C- (and that was a gift).

So what went wrong?

Well, first off, I had some pretty terrible math teachers. I think I have enough distance now and know enough about teaching to say that with some objectivity. We "did problems" in math class. That was the single teaching strategy employed by my teachers. They "got" math and were perplexed by those who didn't. More - they didn't have time for those of us who didn't. My counterpart in math at the West Virginia Department of Education, Lou Maynus, tells us that everyone can learn math. She told me the other day that she could teach calculus to anyone in our building. I believe her. She uses a variety of strategies, including the application of the most abstract concepts to real-world problems that everyone faces. And she has a lot of empathy, too.

Another thing I realize is that my teachers (and parents) viewed intelligence as a single discreet thing. Everything we know about the brain indicates this isn't the case. (Keep in mind, this was before the work of Howard Gardner became wildly popular.) I'm a reasonably intelligent person in music, art, theatre, language, the social sciences. I'm probably average in the hard sciences and kinesthetic intelligence (my poor performance in sports was due more to lack of strength and speed, not an innate clumsiness). But I'm almost certainly below average intelligence in math.

The assumption that "smart" is one thing has caused many such academic casualties. We know better now, but we still often assume that a student who is brilliant in math should be equally bright in language, or that a student who is an excellent chemist should be able to play guitar. This may be the case, or it may not. Human intelligence is incredibly diverse.

The negative consequences of this thinking are profound. In my case, I ended up narrowing my own curriculum by choice. I elected to take as few math classes as necessary throughout my academic career, as well as science classes that involved a lot of math. I also began evaluating the importance of my coursework based upon whether I thought it would be necessary in my career as a musician.

Now, don't get me wrong here. Students should be free to pursue those interests for which they have talents. Forcing all students to master an identical curriculum is one of the practices that has led us down the path we find ourselves as a nation. I'm glad I was able to take the number of music classes I did in high school and I think every student musician should be free to do so. What I'm suggesting is something else.

What I'm suggesting is this: all learning is good learning. It's not as if learning too much about calculus is going to prevent someone from learning to play the trumpet. Now, it is true that students have limited time in their academic day. Choices must be made, and these can be difficult choices.

But our students need to learn about as many things as they can and as deeply as they can. They need a deep understanding of words, form, movement, pitch, numbers, feelings, and all the rest. They need to learn about the world in all the ways they experience it.

What we know about creativity also suggests that we need to make sure students have the chance to interact with a wide array of disciplines. Creativity generally happens when seeming disparate ideas interact in new ways. Einstein told others that his understanding of music, a discipline whose essence is time, drove his intuition in the discovery of the theory of relativity. And Steve Jobs has made no secret of the fact that much of the design of the Macintosh computer is the result of a single class he took at Reed College in calligraphy.

We also need to stop thinking about education in such narrow terms. We need to acknowledge that students do not have to learn everything in a school building from a teacher. Learning can happen anywhere. (Lest I be mistaken: I don't mean to suggest that arts programs should happen primarily outside of school. Certainly our students can learn much in the arts through those extended learning opportunities, but they can also learn math and science that way.) Schools and teachers need to be transformed into places that inspire students to become independent thinkers and learners, and then help them acquire the resources they need, whether within the walls of academia, or without.

We also need to truly believe that our education never stops. All of us, especially those of us in education, need to model ourselves on Chaucer's Oxford cleric: "Gladly would he learn and gladly teach." We need to have a love affair in this country, not just with education as a system, but with learning, in all its myriad forms.

This manifests itself in many ways in my life. I find myself spending more time at the piano than I used to, and the result is a different type of understanding of harmony especially. It's not that I didn't play before, but I am more curious than I used to be. I'm also trying to correct another of the major deficiencies in my education: my lack of foreign language. My academic experience with foreign language was limited to a single semester of French in college. I enjoyed it, but it didn't seem important to me. Now I'm actively pursuing this interest - Italian this time, instead of French. And I'm using 21st century resources, including Italian language podcasts, blogs and YouTube videos. I don't have time for a class.

I just might take Lou up on her offer, too, and see what calculus I can learn. The creative possibilities seem endless.

. . . and the Arts.

I'm going to describe something that happened to me last week at work that is unfortunately, all too typical. But first I need to give you a little background.

West Virginia has adopted the "Common Core" State Standards in English and Math. These standards were authored by work groups with membership from around the country. In West Virginia, these standards have been renamed the "Next Generation Standards." The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) include literacy standards in social studies, science and the "technical subjects." In their shortsightedness, the writers of the standards apparently believed that literacy was not an important issue in the arts. I approached my bosses and suggested to them that we author literacy standards in the arts as well, to demonstrate both our commitment to the arts, as well as an understanding that literacy (including reading, writing, speaking and listening) are key processes in the arts. I've received the go ahead for this and I am hopeful that we will unveil West Virginia Literacy Standards in the Arts in the 2012 school year. I'm not sure, but I think we may be the first state to do so.

My office has presented on this topic on multiple occasions to various audiences. Last Wednesday was one such occasion, when we were asked to present for four hours to various offices from around the Department. We were to present the background for the work, an overview about the math and English/language arts standards, a discussion of "text complexity" and how the issue of literacy is important in every content area.

I discovered on Tuesday that I had been given the "sweet spot": the final ten minutes of the four-hour presentation, right before lunch.

The ordering reflected the implicit (and sometimes explicit) hierarchy that dominates our educational system. English and math usually come first, the sciences typically follow, then the humanities, "and the arts." This hierarchy is reinforced everywhere in a thousand different ways. It is so pervasive, that the phrase "and the arts" has become a bit of a joke among the arts advocacy community. I'll illustrate with just a few examples.

When I was working in the classroom full time, I was asked to write an "instructional guide" in music for the Department of Education. We convened one time at the Waterfront Place Hotel in Morgantown, where there were instructional guide writers in the other disciplines as well. All the teachers listened to a general session on the work and then we broke out into our content areas. The other content areas worked in adjacent salons that were roomy and close to the restrooms and break areas. The arts teachers were shuffled off to a second floor work room without enough chairs and no WiFi access.

In another instance, I was with several arts teachers working at the Flatwoods Conference Center on another project. We were piggy-backing with a different project involving English, math, science and social studies teachers, so we were sharing some space. They had this curious thing at Flatwoods where the meals and breaks were given names that were displayed on placards on the buffet tables, things like "The Fruit of the Sea" for a seafood meal or "Down on the Farm" if you were having fried chicken and biscuits. Anyway, it came time for lunch and we moved to the common dining area. As we entered, the catering staff asked which group we were with, the arts or the other group. The arts were escorted to a buffet line with a placard that read, "A Taste of Italy." Lunch included baked ziti, salad, rolls and chocolate cake. We looked curiously over at the other buffet line. Their placard read, "A Tour of Italy," and included everything we had, plus vegetable and meat lasagna, meatballs, chicken picatta and tiramisu.

Now, it's not just that I think that these incidents are illustrative of the lower value we place on the arts and arts teachers, though that certainly may be true. What I think both of these instances illustrate is that the arts were an afterthought in the planning process. I doubt that anyone wanted to put arts teachers in cramped spaces or feed them less, it's just that they hadn't considered them in the first place and then had to fit them in.

The same thing happens in our schools everyday and unfortunately, it happens with our students, not just the teachers.

We pour untold resources into our math and language arts programs. Millions of dollars are spent building high-stakes summative assessments to measure student literacy and numeracy. The federal Title I programs give millions more toward the same goals. Schools invest in computer-based test prep programs in those subjects. Students' schedules are built around the required English and math requirements first, followed by the sciences and social studies.

Yet we expect our arts programs to thrive through car washes and bake sales. We expect elementary students to master arts standards with 30 minutes of instruction a week (or less). We ask secondary arts teachers to teach multiple levels, sometimes even multiple subjects, in the same class period. We keep students from scheduling arts classes they want to take for classes we've judged are more likely to "prepare them for college." (And we counsel them they aren't going to be musicians or artists. Of course, they probably aren't going to be linguists or mathematicians either.) Then when our arts programs fail, we blame the arts teachers, the only people in the building working to make them succeed.

If we are going to truly transform our educational system, we must stop thinking like this. The arts are core academic subjects that are essential to student success. Our students need language and math to make sense of their world, of course they do. But they also need an understanding of movement and gesture, color and form, drama and narrative, rhythm and melody. They need to be prepared to make sense of their world in all the ways they experience it.

The workplace that students in our schools will inhabit is nearly unimaginable to us. What we do know is that they will benefit enormously from creativity nurtured in the arts classroom. We also know that they are so much more than "workers," that if we value their humanity, we will give them a world filled with dance, theatre, the visual arts and music.

Everyone wants to reform education right now. That's what the Common Core State Standards are all about. The problem is that the work being done belies the fact that our priorities may have not shifted at all. The work began first in English and math, then science and social studies. The arts were still an afterthought.

Many have begun saying that education reform is not enough. Some are beginning to use the word transformation. But the word that others are bold enough to use, the one that really describes what we need, is revolution. I would argue that the first order of the education revolution should be re-valuing the arts in our schools.

History is on the side of the bold. To paraphrase Sir Ken Robinson, the Italian Renaissance didn't happen because the Medici's had a literacy plan. When we view the major cultural achievements of civilizations throughout history, the role of the arts is central, equal to the role of the sciences, mathematics, and the humanities. The reason for that is obvious: the arts inflame the intellect and the imagination.

The arts are the soul of a school. Schools without thriving arts programs are desolate places, not just intellectually, but emotionally, too. Whoever you are, whether a teacher, student, administrator, parent or part of the community, it is incumbent upon you to help us make schools the culturally rich places we imagine they can be. The revolution needs you.

On the Partial Reading of Books

When I lived in Morgantown as graduate student, back when the Internet was young and Amazon.com was just a twinkle in Jeff Bezos' eye, I used to make regular trips to Border's Books and Music in Pittsburgh. This was the first large bookstore I had ever seen. A professor of mine had directed me there to purchase a copy of Ellington: The Early Years by Mark Tucker. I asked if I should call ahead to make sure they had a copy and he responded, "Of course they'll have it."

Growing up in Beckley, WV, it was difficult to imagine a book store that would have a copy of something I wanted to read when I wanted to read it. I was certain that if I had asked someone at Waldenbooks at the Crossroads Mall if they had a copy of Ellington: The Early Years, I would be met with a blank stare.

I still remember first walking through the front door. It was like a wonderland. Shelf after shelf of books on philosophy, religion, music, art, poetry . . . everything. There was a music store inside, too. Their world music section was about as large as my record store at home.

I spent a lot of money at that place in two years. A lot of money. (In retrospect, it seems unethical in the extreme to issue credit cards to college students, but it seemed like free money at the time.)

I bought everything you can imagine. I bought new releases with quirky titles and brushed-paper covers. I bought glossy travel guides to places I had no plans to visit. I also bought "classics."

One of the first books I bought at Border's was Ulysses by James Joyce. At the time, I knew nothing about Joyce except that he was Irish and that Ulysses was considered a classic, a major achievement in Western literature. It was massive. I bought the paperback copy, but I still think it weighed about 8 pounds.

I took home Ulysses along with a sack of other purchases and settled in to read. I picked the Joyce up first. I got about ten pages. I put in a bookmark then picked up another book.

I tried again about six months later. I think I may have gotten 20 pages that time.

Over the years, I believe I've tried to read Ulysses five times, each time inching forward a few more pages. The last time I got to about page 75 before giving up. The problem is that the damn thing is about 800 pages long.

For those of you who have not set out on the odyssey to conquer Joyce's epic novel, I will simply say that it is daunting. There is a long bit at the front about a tower. And a key, I think. And some young men arguing, but not in any sort of violent way. At one point the main character goes to use the toilet.

I feel like a true failure and a bit of a fraud, pretending to be an educated person when I am largely unfamiliar with this important literary work.

I feel like a failure until I read Nick Hornby.

Hornby, the author of High Fidelity and several other lovely works of fiction also wrote non-fiction books about books, The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping Versus The Dirt. If you are a bibliophile to any degree, I would highly recommend them. In each, Hornby chronicles his own love of books, each chapter a monthly entry in a diary recounting books he has purchased, books he has read and books he has started to read. One quickly learns that this successful author, who is widely read and British, for crying out loud, has trouble making it to the last page quite frequently.

I suffer from this disease in the worst way. At any given moment, there are four or five books I am "reading," though some have gathered dust on a shelf for months.

Here's what I'm "reading" right now.

Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by Kay Refield Jamison. Okay, I really am reading this one right now. I'm about three-quarters through and it is sitting on the table next to me, waiting for me to quit blogging. It's excellent, by the way, and compelling for anyone in the arts and/or anyone who is familiar with manic depression.

I think I could still argue that I am reading the second volume of Peter Guralnick's Elvis biography, Careless Love. I plowed through the first volume, Last Train to Memphis and expected the number two to be just as exciting. The problem is that volume one feels like "That's Alright Mama" and volume two feels like Having Fun with Elvis on Stage. I'm sure I'll finish it: I'm about 50 pages from the finish line. Actually, the last 50 pages may be good companion reading with the Jamison book.

By the way, Guralnick's other books, especially Sweet Soul Music and Lost Highway are excellent. He is my favorite music writer and has a deep understanding of American music.

I cannot tell you how excited I was to begin reading Creativity by Mihaly Csikzentmihaly. I have given away about six copies of his seminal work Flow, which is about the science of motivation and why we should do the thing we love. I read Flow in college (I bought it at Border's) and will talk about it to anyone who will stand still for five minutes. Imagine my excitement when I learned that one of my favorite authors had written on the subject of creativity - a topic I never tire of discussing! I made it about half-way through.

The problem was that I disagree with Czikzentmihaly's framework for understanding creativity, which he introduces early on, as well as his very flawed method of studying the issue. I'll spare you the details here, but the experience left me jaded. I suppose I may finish it someday soon, since I think the issue of creativity is so very important. But I'm not going to enjoy it.

This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession is a pretty good read by Daniel Levitin, in spite of its truly horrific title. I could even say that I loved the first part of it. Somewhere about two-thirds of the way through I set it down and just haven't wanted to pick it up again. For the first several chapters, it was very affirming to me. I read page after page about why we love music - not some voodoo, but hard science. It's in our genetic code! Hurray! Science validates my love of music! That's all well and good, I suppose, but after a while I felt like Whitman listening to the learned astronomers, wanting to go outside and gaze at the silent stars.

We were assigned Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do about It by Kelly Gallagher as a work assignment. The premise of the the book is excellent and important, and that is that we have taken the joy of reading from students, largely by forcing them to read things they don't want to. Here's the thing: I hate being told I have to read something. So I haven't finished it. (I'll give you a moment for the irony of this anecdote to fully settle in.) I've got a single chapter left in this slim paperback, but it may never get read. Keep in mind, I went through junior and senior high school English reading every novel assigned after we had the final test on each. It's just some weird compulsion.

That leaves one final unfinished read.

Ulysses.

Maybe I'll start that one tomorrow.

Transforming Education through Challenging Our Assumptions, OR Why the Founding Fathers weren't Smart Enough to Use an iPhone

(Written July 30, 2011.)

I'm a big fan of Sir Ken Robinson. Anyone who has known me for any time has been forced to watch one of his videos or listened to me quote him. His first TED talk, entitled, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" has been viewed 9 million times. If you've not availed yourself of the opportunity, you should go watch it immediately.

He also has a very entertaining piece from RSAnimate entitled, "Changing Education Paradigms". In it, he outlines the history of educational systems around the world and why they emphasize the things they do. One of his chief contentions is that modern education systems are made in the image and serve the ends of the Industrial Revolution. While not the first to note this, Sir Ken highlights the more humorous aspects of this phenomenon. One of his chief concerns is that we are educating people out of their creativity and away from their natural talents. We are doing this because our education systems were built to develop a narrow set of human capacities most useful for work in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Many have responded to these concerns in admirable ways. The Partnership for 21st Century Learning developed their framework around those skills and content areas necessary for the new workplace: creativity, innovation, collaboration, information and communication technologies, critical thinking, leadership and others. Recognizing their own image in this list, arts educators applauded these. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) organized work on common state standards (the "Common Core") in English and Math, which include "anchor standards" in grades K-12, designed to promote college and career readiness. Teachers and parents will be able, it is thought, to see how ready for college their 5-year-old is.

The discussion in education is moving away from the topic of "reform." Robinson and others have argued for "revolution" or "transformation" of education systems. The problem is that many have yet to challenge their own long-held assumptions about education.

In my opinion, the chief assumption of public education systems everywhere is that education is to prepare students for work. One of the reasons that arts programs have historically been viewed as dispensable is that most thought it unlikely that large numbers of people would find gainful employment as painters or guitarists or whatever. Algebra and English and the lot were viewed as essential to entering the 20th century workforce in a way that dance was not.

I would like to comment here about our use of the word “talent,” because I think it reveals a great deal about our view of intelligence as well. Most people describe someone who plays the piano or dances well as “talented.” Yet we describe someone who is good at trigonometry or chemistry as “intelligent.” Knowing what we do now about human cognition, this seems an arbitrary distinction. I remember a conversation with a colleague a couple of years ago where she insisted that you could not teach someone to sing – the person was either born knowing how to sing or not. This is complete nonsense and demonstrably false. Thousands of children are taught to sing by music teachers every year. The fact that some people seem to be “born singers” in no way negates this. Some children seem to be born writers, yet no one would think of suggesting that we stop teaching all children to write.

Designating some human capacities “talents” has allowed us to wash our hands of developing these in our school systems to some degree. That our deepened understanding of human intelligence, especially the work of Howard Gardner, et al, has not driven us toward a broader curriculum, may indicate that those decisions are made for political rather than educational reasons.

As a consequence, even though it has long been possible to get a job as a violist or an actor, it was assumed that those in possession of these “talents” would gain the prerequisite skills quite apart from education. It seems unthinkable that we would make the same assumption about engineers or physicists.

The workforce has changed radically in the last twenty years and will continue to change for the foreseeable future. It’s become common in education to quip that most children are being educated for jobs that do not even exist yet. Who was educated to be a smart phone app developer or a viral marketing consultant?

Not only is the workforce changing, but views of work itself are changing. To many people in the mid 20th century especially, work was seen as a necessary process for obtaining the life one wanted: bread on the table, shoes for the kids, then later an automobile, your own home, several televisions, etc. You may have taken a job in a factory or mine and viewed that as merely a means to an ends. While it is true that there are still those who view work in this way, there seems to be a growing number who expect work to provide personal satisfaction. According to a report from the Conference Board in 2010, job satisfaction among Americans is at 45% - the lowest since the report began examining that data in the 80s. Chief among the reasons was that workers found their jobs uninteresting.

Why should this be? It’s difficult to imagine that working in a factory stuffing cardboards into shirts was all that interesting in 1960. Are we just less content and grumpier than our parents and grandparents? Perhaps, but there may be other reasons.

One, as Robinson has noted, is that we are living in the most stimulating time in all of human history. Talking heads are fond of imagining what George Washington might say about the economy or how Abraham Lincoln might view the war in Iraq, but I’m guessing that if we showed them an iPhone their heads would probably explode. One can imagine John Adams in the passenger seat of a Mustang cruising down an eight-lane highway at 80 M.P.H. holding on for dear life and screaming for the witches to stop their demon metal horse carriage and let him repose in the nearest apple orchard.

We take for granted the constant stream of media in our lives. Yet many go to workplaces that haven’t changed that much since their parents’ times and find them boring. Workers in 2011 want stimulation at work, they want to use social networking, they want to view cat videos on YouTube, they may even want gaming.

Other ways our lives have changed are causing us to seek meaning in our workplace as well. Many do not find personal meaning in religion or family the way that past generations did. While I will not argue that this is a good, or even neutral, thing, it means that work plays a larger role in how we make meaning for ourselves. We want what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow” – that feeling of timelessness and purpose as we are engaged in an activity that maximizes our talents.

It was easy to see “work” and “life” as separate worlds in the mid 20th century. The worker, usually the “man of the family” would go to work during regular hours, wearing his “work clothes,” whether blue or white collar, return home and enjoy his family and leave work until the next day.

For many of us, this is no longer the case. I had the opportunity to visit the offices of VH-1 this year for a work-related trip. The employees there arrived when they wished. VH-1 stocked each floor’s kitchen with the favorites of the staff: energy drinks, Captain Crunch, popcorn, etc. Everyone dressed stylishly; you might think the whole staff were preparing for a night of clubbing. The employees spoke casually to one another, even their bosses. The interior looked like Tony Stark and Andy Warhol had designed it, and all the furniture was comfortable. Employees walked around on cell phones, listening to music and genuinely enjoying their day. They left when they finished their work.

We do not have the silos of “work” and “life” the way many of our parents and grandparents did. I’m writing this piece, largely about my work, on a Saturday afternoon. I plan to post it to Facebook so that my friends might think about it. When I’m at work on Monday, I’ll probably spend some time making personal calls, checking my seats for the concert next Thursday, and buying a pair of shoes online. Then I’ll take my laptop home and work some more on a guidance document from my job.

We no longer think of ourselves in these discreet ways anymore and our education systems must mirror this shift. Education must help us think about global issues so that we can make informed decisions. It must help us to find thoughtful ways to engage our time away from work. It must help us make choices that affect our health and wellness. It must help us express our thoughts and feelings about ourselves and the human condition.

Education systems must also begin to recognize that children are human beings now – not simply when they begin contributing to the economy. 18-plus years is a significant portion of one’s life. We must start considering the humanity of those we teach and recognize that each has unique gifts and abilities, each has thoughts and feelings, and each has the potential to help make this world a more humane, rich and meaningful place. While we want our students to be “college and career ready,” they have lives and are looking for purpose now.

If our education systems are to meet the demands of the 21st century, we need to stop thinking about educating children solely for work. We don’t know what their work will be; we cannot begin to imagine it. Not only that, but they are much more than workers. They are whole human beings and it is a moral imperative, in my opinion, that we educate as many of their capacities as we can, not only that they may be prepared for the workplace, but also so they will be prepared to make meaning of their lives in an increasingly complex world.

The arts must be included in any curriculum that will prepare students for the future. We all have the ability to dance, to act, to draw and to sing, if we are given the chance. These abilities foster creativity that will help us to solve problems we cannot begin to imagine will exist. They will also help us make meaning of our 21st century world, just as they have in every other century.

Secrets of the Successful Classroom Revealed!!

(Written May 5, 2011.)

Teaching can be a very strange profession. Up until the mid-twentieth century, it was probably widely believed that teaching was not a separate skill set. Most assumed that if, for example, one knew how to play the saxophone, one could teach others to play. Knowledge of content was equated with the ability to teach. This is apparently the predominant view in most colleges, universities and churches to this day. Professors are routinely hired for their expertise in a field and given teaching assignments with little or no thought given to their ability to teach. Law schools are the worst. They seem to hold those in the highest regard who have the least pedagogical ability. Law professors who have high failure rates and belittle their students are revered. (Keep in mind, most of my knowledge of this comes from being married to a lawyer and watching three seasons of The Paper Chase.) How many of us have been put to sleep by the lectures of those considered the leading experts in their field, only to leave their classes with no more understanding of the content than when we entered?

Knowledge of content does not equate with the ability to teach. In public schools at least, we have come to this realization.

The problem is that we have seen the pendulum swing too far the other way. In my own field, I have grown sick of hearing, “She’s not really a good musician herself, but she’s an excellent teacher.” Bullshit. No, she’s not. In the arts at least, I sometimes think this is a crisis. I will say this as plainly as I can: if you have not mastered your craft enough to be a passable dancer, actor, artist or musician, please stay out of the arts classroom. You simply do not know enough. You may write killer lesson plans, you may have wonderful classroom management skills, you may even “inspire” students, but all of that will break down where the rubber meets the road. The simple truth is that if you don’t love the subject you teach enough to master it, you cannot possibly guide other human beings to mastery.

The concept of “teaching technique” has reached a strange level in our field. Every few months someone appears with a new method, complete with a reinvented vocabulary, in an attempt to build the teaching craft. My first few experiences with this as a young teacher were truly baffling. I attended a professional development on something called the “Thompson Method,” that was sure to transform the classroom. We learned about “essential questions” and “activating strategies.” It was all very informative. I thought my college professors must have been quite ignorant to not be familiar with this technique. I tried it for about a year, until I went to another professional development session where I learned that Max Thompson had it wrong, that his “essential questions” weren’t all that essential at all.

The same has been true in other areas of teaching as well, including classroom management, approaches to differentiation, lesson planning, assessment, remediation, literacy and so on. I learned how to write instructional guides. I learned the difference between “goals” and “standards.” I learned the principles of project based learning. Every new idea came with its own body of research supporting it and promises that it would reinvigorate our classrooms. It is actually quite difficult to stay abreast of trends in pedagogy. I have a few friends who are always on the cutting edge and I admire them. Every year they have a fresh approach to the classroom and they seem better teachers for it.

I am not like those teachers. Don’t’ get me wrong: I think the craft of teaching is important. For that matter, I think it is a skill that can be developed, just like playing the saxophone. It is incumbent upon educators to learn their craft. What I think I object to is the short shelf life of our vocabulary. I’ll give an example.

At the Department of Education, I’m currently working on professional development for teachers on learning progressions. I’m charged with helping them understand grain size and the importance of vertical alignment of their curriculum. The thing is, I didn’t really know what a “learning progression” was until a few weeks ago myself. (I’m not an idiot: I understand the words “learning” and “progression.” I had just never heard that as a term of art.) I had never heard the phrase “grain size” and “vertical alignment” would have had no specific context for me.

How is this possible? I think I’m a pretty damn good teacher. I’m not saying this arrogantly. I don’t mean I’m a phenomenal teacher, just that I have a degree of competency. How is it possible that I was able to put on several concerts a year without a learning progression? How did my students learn to play the twelve-bar blues, master AP Theory and make the all-state choir before I knew about grain size?

Lest I be misunderstood, let me say that I think it is important that we have these discussions as teachers. Some of these ideas are actually quite good. I am concerned, however, that this mastery of technical nomenclature is equated with good teaching. Nothing could be further from the truth. You become a good teacher much the same way you become a good saxophonist: you practice. Faced with 25 (or maybe 125) teenagers who have just failed an algebra test or broken up with their boyfriends, went to bed at 2:00 AM, skipped breakfast, text constantly and desperately want to learn to play music, the technical knowledge of teaching will only get you so far. It’s good to have a plan. But it’s even better if you can communicate, empathize, improvise, adapt, create and synthesize.

Luckily, if you’re a real artist, you’ve already mastered those skills.

The Artists' Meeting

(Written April 10, 2011.)

I was looking for a quote just now but can’t find it online. It’s probably an apocryphal story anyway. Supposedly someone asked Greta Garbo why she had chosen a life on the stage and she answered, “Because I got tired of sitting in the audience.” (Maybe it was Mae West. Or Marlene Dietrich. But you get the point.) There is something about artists that makes them want to be the focus of attention. I used to think this was only true of performing artists, but I’m discovering it’s just as true of painters and sculptors. I am coming more and more to believe that this is a product of our insecurity more than anything else. This is no great revelation: I am hardly the first person to note this. No matter what any artist says, s/he needs that audience approval, or at least an audience reaction. Some artists seem to thrive on provoking their public, but that’s really just the flip side of the same drive. Ask any classroom teacher and they will tell you: students who are unable to get positive attention would rather have negative attention than none at all. Even an angry audience is confirmation for us that we exist, and that our existence matters. Indifference can crush one’s soul.

I’ve also discovered that this need transfers to other life situations, with sometimes disastrous results. Having spent many hours in meetings with artists and arts educators, it seems that we, as a community, are at times crippled by an inability to remain dispassionate. I will freely confess that I find this occasionally amusing. Watching the color rise in the face of la prima donna or listening as maestro’s words crescendo and become increasingly nonsensical has a comic effect – if you are not the target of her or his ire. More often than not, however, the final result is a lack of any real progress.

For you artists and arts educators who are not frequenters of meetings, let me give you a bit of a guide for the neophyte.

First, you must learn proper protocol when speaking. It is incumbent upon you, the artist, to give everyone in attendance as much of your résumé as possible. Before addressing the matter at hand, preface your remarks by indicating famous venues where you have performed or noted pedagogues with whom you have studied. If you lack these credentials, speak in vague terms. Tell everyone you have performed “in France” if your high school choir once sang at Euro-Disney. If no one has heard of the college you attended, simply feign disbelief at their intolerable ignorance.

Your tone and demeanor deserve much attention as well. They are many possibilities, so I will mention just a few.

Theatre is always appreciated, so if you have a flair for the dramatic, it certainly helps. Try speaking with just a hint of an accent (a faint Irish brogue is charming). Or maybe use archaic words, such as “Avaunt” or “Betimes.” Gesticulate wildly if you cannot think of a quick retort. And project! Even if you are addressing a board meeting of a dozen individuals, speak as if you are center stage at the Met.

Another option is to play the indignant formalist. Ask for clarifications about parliamentary procedure as much as possible. If you don’t like what someone is saying, simply shout, “Point of order!” No one really knows what this means and they will think you are really smart. Make certain you always know when you have the floor and never yield.

If neither of these fit you, try being the free-spirited hippie. Others will be impressed at how artistic you are by your memorable fashion faux pas and the distinctive scent of patchouli that lingers long after you have exited the room. Being so artistic and “right-brained” frees you from the burden of providing reason and judgment to support your opinions. You also may feel free to attack others with impunity, since they know that you value peace and love.

Next, remember that an artist never compromises. If you’re newly-commissioned performance piece involves defecating on stage and someone suggests that this may not be appropriate for the audience of elementary school students who will be in attendance, this is censorship. If your ensemble is asked to shorten their piece by two minutes in order to accommodate the other 15 performers on the concert, this will certainly compromise the artistic integrity of the work.

Speaking of which, it is imperative that you learn the correct vocabulary when addressing a meeting of artists. You must always speak of “the work” or “the craft.” You may use terms of art, especially if they are non-English words, but this only works well if addressing someone outside your own discipline. If you are musician addressing a group of visual artists, for example, pepper your remarks with words like “virtuosi” or “divertimento.” Refer to any project you are working on as your “opus.” Actors and dancers can likewise confuse musicians by mentioning the “proscenium” or “gels.” (Little known fact: though musicians spend much of their professional lives onstage, none of them know any of the jargon associated with those folks in black t-shirts.) If you’re speaking to someone who has no professional experience with the arts, it helps to mention the “fourth wall” a lot.

I know: physician, heal thyself. I see myself in too many of my own comments, but that’s the point. If we are to move “the work” forward, we have to start working together. Not only that, but I’m beginning to worry about my own mental health. A life of passion is one I highly recommend. Yet it is easy to see the arch of the artist’s life spanning from “angry young man” to “bitter old man.” It may be that being an artist necessitates a hyper-sensitivity to our culture and to societal ills. I just hope we can maybe be a little more civil when talking to each other.