We're Here to Get Led
I have no wish to pile on to the already hulking Heap of Pointless that is the ever-broadening Think Piece Reactionosphere, but that is of course precisely what I will proceed to do. Coming as this does on the heels of that fucker's proclamation that he'd be taking over the (former) Kennedy Center, this fucker whose soul could fit in a thimble with room to spare - and when I say "fit," I'm not talking about like a cat curled in a bathroom sink, I'm saying if you set his soul inside a thimble, this fucking thing could jump its little legs off and still not be able to touch the thimble rim. And to be clear: the (former) Kennedy Center does not, in itself, matter. Largely speaking, it - as with many dozens of lesser places like it that dot the country in any location where population has become dense enough to call itself a city - has been the site of lots of Obligation Art - symphonic music meant to make you seem substantial for attending; the warbling of silver-haired and self-serious troubadours decades past relevance who've ossified into National Treasures; joyless and flatfooted remounts of so-called Classic Plays leached of any of their inciting audacity; sanitized showcases of Exotic Cultures of Foreign Lands that provide spectacle without context that allow the soft-handed patrons of the place to feel worldly ("Such a shame that a people so rich in pageantry should be subject to this ethnic cleansing unpleasantness of late, which is just so regrettable.")
And look, I know the pronouncements are coming hot and heavy out of that glistening pulpy swinehole of his, and so it can be a lot to keep sight of what's supposed to matter to us. Given the pace at which he and his goons seek to strip us of fundamental rights and Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, it might seem petty and wrongheaded to fret about the so-called leadership at a so-called arts institution. But I don't think it is. The Arch of a Republic is made of many stones - I'm not arguing that the removal of a single too-prosperous executive from his post one bloated Culture Mausoleum represents the keystone that will send the structure tumbling into rubble. But - but - there are only so many load-bearing stones that can get yanked out of any structure before it crumbles. And, yes, I believe this to be one of those.
The significance, the real significance of a place such as the (former) Kennedy Center is that it constitutes a societal gesture toward valuing culture, a performative (if very faint) declaration about the indispensable role of creativity and artistic expression in forging a nation's sense of itself. If we think of a country as a persona, the way in which - however dutifully, however begrudgingly - it enshrines its own artistry, is a trait of that persona, a trait we concede to portraying or not. People in power - to the extent that they still wish to appear cultured to one another - will endure the opera (or the ballet or the solo show or the recital or whatever) so long as they are seen doing so by other people in power - discussions in such lobbies are as likely to be about the perceived luster of how good your seats are or how long you've been a subscriber as about anything taking place onstage. Culture is seen simply another form of the right kind of consumption - along with cars and neighborhoods and watches, clocking in to attend culture is just another square on their bingo sheet of Demonstrating Discernment (to Each Other).
The only possibility - however remote, however unlikely - that people in power will encounter ideas that will challenge their own - I'm not even talking about changing them - is if people steeped in the (fruitless, easily ignored, widely denigrated) creative fields expose them to such ideas. In their own work, people in power are so susceptible to the fallacy of their own infallibility they have no use for the cognitive and moral limberness to change much - on rare occasion, someone personally close enough to them can jostle them into caring about some issue or population outside their accustomed constituency/customer base, etc. - a Congressman will have a kid who's trans, say, so this will be enough to temper their support of the Deport the Degenerates bill, or whatever. Or a CEO will go on Undercover Boss and learn that the till recently thieving subhuman ingrates he's had working for him turn out to have been actual people this whole time, so they might ease up some on their longstanding We're Like a Family… That Grinds You Into Mulch policies.
When a person in power takes a set in a theater or a cinema or a concert hall, this is one of the few places in their lives where they are not regarded as Expert and Master - they are Some Dumb Civilian along with the rest of us. The person in power, occupying such a seat, has no recourse to be barking orders or setting underlings against one another or coddling nepo babies, they gotta shut their trap and act civilized. And it can sometimes happen that they'll see or listen to something that makes them feel some way, and that feeling may get folded into the way they are for a little while. So their customary levels of Release the Hounds cruelty might get dialed down a smidge for a bit.
And who, then, is to put such ideas before people in power? Creative people. Because it is creative people who are least prone to fear and resist new ideas. Because creative people are best able to be prescient about what's coming. Because creative people are most capable of folding new concepts into the way they construct reality. Because creative people are most adept at communicating complexity.
I've stated this previously, but it bears repeating till an unnamed plurality of fuckfaces I'm forced to share a country with accepts it as true:
It is the function of the artist to lead us where we DO NOT YET KNOW WE MUST GO.
Which is why relying upon mere administrative functionaries, or, worse, upon political hatchet men, to decide what sorts of work (and as a consequence, what sorts of ideas) we're permitted to encounter, is a recipe for the kind of homogenized simpleton disaster that's descended upon us.
Nice going, dummies.
Footnote: while I've long admired Conan O'Brien's contributions to the comedic sensibility of the nation, and concur that he is a suitable recipient of the Twain Prize, I found it a gutless move to have gone ahead with this ceremony at the (former) Kennedy Center. He could have refused to accept it. Organizers could have held the event in a different venue, one not recently seized by fascist thugs. Zingers are fine as far as they go, but if they're delivered from a stage that's the recent site of an accelerating campaign of muzzling dissent, they have more the feel of sanctioned court jester jibes than the kind of Caesar stab wounds they purport to inflict.
Ian Belknap is a Chicago writer presently living in Baltimore.
