Why Art Matters

Some people seem to live several lifetimes in their time on Earth and keyboardist Jon Ross falls easily into that category.  He has been and is many things to many people. He’s a husband, father and friend who has written songs for his wife, children and patrons.  He’s a well-educated music teacher who has arranged pieces for his students both at school and in his private piano teaching studio.  He’s a rock entertainer who plays keyboards in full costume as Leonardo the Ninja Turtle in the 80s and 90s tribute band, Rubiks Groove.  And I cannot stop smiling about that.  

If life is about anything, it’s about balance. For instance, there are seasons both weather-related and age-related.  There is night and day.  Then there are personal balancing acts such as responsibility versus freedom. Jon told me had to confront this issue as a band director, and it ultimately led him to leave the rigorous lifestyle to find more meaning as a musical creator.  

I can relate.  When I was taking some music education courses at Belmont University, one topic came up repeatedly—advocacy.  Music educators are taught to expect to have to rally for public support of their class.  Music teachers leave college in defense mode, spending a lot of time thinking about what life would be without art.  They can’t take it for granted that the society they live in appreciates fully why as an educator, they might opt to spend a semester learning about Duke Ellington as opposed to a current pop star.  They have to be prepared to promote big-picture thinking about the arts. 

Jon got me thinking when he mentioned that civilizations leave behind art.  Seriously, what DO former planetary dwellers leave behind?  When I started digging (figuratively speaking), the first answer I came up with was fossils.  Some leave structures and items that archeologists determine to be dishes and tools.  We have no way of knowing what music sounded like a thousand years ago, but we might have a drawing of a drum on a cave wall.  We can assume that art has always been important.

I believe we are all creative, by virtue of being human.  Indeed, it always bothers me when I hear someone say that they are not creative.   Some of us may have more of a calling than others, but people engage in acts of creativity simply by being alive.  Art is sometimes a musical composition and sometimes it is a cartoon character. It is sometimes a mother’s made-up bedtime story and sometimes a hit song.  It is a garden, a painting, furniture arranging, knitting.     

I can’t begin to express all the ways the arts matter, but I’d like to leave you with a couple quotes I found on the National Endowment For The Arts website.  And I encourage you to do some digging of your own, ether through reading, viewing or listening to a work of art today and every day.  

“Art matters because it illustrates the human experience—the wonder of it, the bewilderment of it, the whimsy of it, and so much more.  We would not be connected so deeply without the existence of art.” —Kathleen Dinsmore

“To me, the arts matter because they illuminate signals in the noise to help us navigate through life conscientiously, with a deeper understanding of ourselves in broader contexts.  Art matters because it teaches us why we matter.”—Bill O’Brien