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Handbaskets
If you had to choose between home or school, and art or science, which would you say turned you on creatively?
Jake W. "Computers, of course. Are those the only choices? I would choose my dad. Without a doubt the craziest dude on the planet."
Celeste B. "Artistically, I don't think I would have gotten to the levels I have without the help of many teachers, both in secondary and higher education. I don't have much use for science, although I do like Isaac Asimov."
Trace F. "I think it's all in your own head. Or heart. Or whatever. But it doesn't come from outside."
Frances R. "I would have to say 50/50. I don't see how you can do without one or the other."
Catherine G. "It's a continuum. That's a bit like asking the chicken/egg question."
Every person I asked in my unscientific survey had his or her own personal take in the debate over the place of 'coloring outside the lines' in life. Who jumpstarts it? How does it flourish? What happens when you move away from your favorite teacher? Suppose your computer geek dad dies? When do you fly on your own without your mentor? Who is responsible for nurturing the arts? Is science intrinsically more valuable to the spirit? Are we truly so fucked up at this moment in history that hell in handbaskets is actually kind of a sweet concept compared to worldwide annihilation?
Here are two very different takes—one from me and one from my partner. We come from such different backgrounds we thought we'd write our stuff separately and see what the other came up with. Then we'll meet across the divide & just have fun at the kitchen table, triggering a script.
From Music to Dance to Theater – Claudine Jones
In my infancy, I know that I must have heard Piaf from phonograph records my mother had brought with her from France, and I do remember watching my dad play his accordion. At age three though, the first jolts of what I would call 'artistic inspiration' came directly from the speakers of a reel to reel tape recorder. That machine, by today's standards, had the most miserable bunch of whirring, clunking, buzzing noises. Yet it was down low enough so I could see the pulse of a mysterious red light in the center when the music came out. I almost couldn't breathe from excitement. The orchestra was full, luscious, like ripe fruit: Peer Gynt, Hungarian Rhapsodies, An American in Paris, Boccherini, Pastorale Symphony.
Directly across from this, almost like he planned it, was the bottom-most shelf of a small bookcase my dad had built, like a tiny stage, gently curved edge sticking out into the room, smooth with layers of paint. My little avatar, a floppy hand-made doll, pranced about upon this platform, sometimes driven to frenzy, other times snatched up and whirled around in my arms. By the time I was old enough actually to take part in a beginners ballet class, I think I had pretty much already choreographed most of Finlandia, Mazeppa and Scheherazade.
So I suppose compared to my parents I had a head start; I don't believe either of them was introduced to orchestral music that early. I know that my French grandfather hit Paris in the 1890's, fresh from the country, and apparently took part in claques at various theatres before he became a physician, then married and settled down decades later. My grand'mere was a shadow, no opinions, no presence, feelings obscured past knowing. Anything in the nature of arts was strictly the job of my mother's school. Not tolerated at home. Math and science on the other hand, were like the holy grail, but this little girl was pronounced 'too stupid' to excel in these.
Like my dad taking violin lessons in high school and accidentally discovering he had perfect pitch. His parents enjoyed music immensely, but it was a 'country' thing for grandpa—jew's harp and fiddle—while for grandma, it was clean, quiet hymns on an upright piano at church. No fooling around. Emotions kept in check, while my dad and his brother watched them create, the repressed nature of their religious beliefs in lifelong conflict: their father with his love of designing & building, his carving and painting, and their mother with her apple dolls and endless array of clothing, quilts, weaving—both of them inspired by…who knows? God? Jesus? Parents? The real sources died with them.
By the time I arrived, a sense of the freedom to create had permeated the atmosphere where I lived. Every inch of space in our dwelling was my mother's canvas. She developed and sustained an unstoppable line of these domiciles—lost count of how many over the years—the theme of which was the expression of her loves: dark wood, smooth marble, precise jumbles of texture and color. Whether on herself or on a couch or wall or bed or door, it was all the same. The aesthetic out-rules the function every time.
In typical style, my dad launched a hundred projects and finished few—but the ones he did finish were bizarre: six months in the making—one single chair, legs and back carved out of oak to match the sides of our 400 year old refectory dining table (one of my mother's mid-stage triumphs of antiquing), but the chair so heavy, you could barely move it, so gorgeous as it was, there was never another. Or a tiny, carefully bound book, written, translated into French & illustrated with pen & colored inks, for the fifth birthday of my youngest cousin, Isabelle, thousands of miles away in France, but still his god-daughter and so deserving of some attention. I was so jealous: the cunning drawings, bright colors & intricate detail of foliage & such—some of the preliminary sketches are still around somewhere—and the story! A bunch of animals in the African veldt, one of them is a giraffe, and he develops a sore throat. By the end of the book, he has been presented by his friends with a lovely long striped knitted tube-scarf, that fits neatly on the entire length of his neck! Happy resolution…but my dad never made another one & to my knowledge, never sent Isabelle another item of any sort.
So, naturally, I was completely confused: for dad, ballet seemed to mean driving me to lessons, for mom it meant was I 'doing it too much?' (whatever that meant). When I continued into my teens with it, she had to concede that it was serious, and when I branched out finally into drama—OMG! I had found mentors who were giving me feedback about what was going on inside me, what had been started by the reel to reel—and suddenly my dad was telling me that he thought I had 'what it takes'. But I caved in to mom and dropped Drama my junior year so I could fit typing into my schedule…a decision I cudgeled myself for years over…and finally realized that it was fear that my dad was wrong, that I didn't have 'it', that made me wimp out. Didn't matter, in point of fact, since that's the year they did Miracle Worker and I was Helen. I just…fell out of my little artistic womb. The hard slap you hear is my mother waking me out of my dream.
Crossing the Wheatstone Bridge – Rich Yurman
The tension between education for employment and education for learning is one that I have lived with since I was a 16 year old good at math but interested only in reading novels and stories.
My parents, born into very poor families and married during the Great Depression, were very clear about my future: I was to go to college and study something with a promising economic future—the obvious choice: electronics. When I was accepted at MIT the pressure was on. I could read all the books I wanted to and study history and philosophy as an avocation, but I had to major in electrical engineering so my future employment would be secured.
That my life turned out so different from what they imagined is in great part due to the visionary work of an MIT Dean. After years of battling he had managed to have The Institute adopt a humanities requirement: all MIT undergrads were required to take one humanities course each semester freshman and sophomore years. After that there were many electives that could be pursued for those interested. Even during those first two years there was a broad range of choices to fulfill the requirement.
This program had been in place for only a few years when I arrived in 1954. But Dean Burchard's drive was just beginning. He worked to create a humanities faculty and a series of humanities majors. These were to begin at the start of my junior year. By then I had packed my schedule with an overload of humanities classes. Philosophy and literature filled my days at school, while the technical studies for electrical engineering became annoyances I had to put up with. As soon as the potential to switch to a humanities major was announced, I signed up.
You can imagine how my parents reacted. What could I possibly do with this stuff? What kind of jobs could it lead to? At the end of my soph year the new department held a gathering for the parents of potential majors during which faculty members talked earnestly with us one family at a time. Though my folks left unsatisfied, they at least had agreed to the change.
I finished MIT with a degree in Literature and Philosophy, along with a minor in Electrical Engineering, so that the course work I had already completed would not be "wasted." I went on to get an MA in English Language and Literature from Boston University and then to 34 years as a university and community college teacher of English and Creative Writing.
Throughout my teaching life I continued to deal with this issue, especially during 24 years of community college teaching. Most c.c. students are seeking employment advancement or improved career options. They take classes not in their "field" with great reluctance and often with a good deal of resentment. "Why am I wasting my time learning about literature or writing when it will not be useful on my job?"
The debate in a nutshell: what is education for—a job or a life?
The push and the money, of course, have always come down on the side of the technological, mathematical, job oriented, etc. But there have been times when a higher proportion was allocated to the less "practical." Right now, with money tight (not because it isn't there, but because the tax structure is skewed so that the needs of business and military empire predominate while all else is starved), we have to fight to maintain our vision of what makes us human.
Now that I am 72 and retired, I'm not in the center of that fight any longer. But I see how the retreat from the humanities has impacted our lives. Funding cuts for non-technical education, dismissing of faculty, curtailing of course offerings all add up to constricted lives. The masters of this society have decided we need low skill, poorly paid workers, docile, unable to think critically or read with any depth of understanding, easily distracted with scandals and shallow entertainments. Roman Bread and Circuses.
Yet I retain my belief that the humanities are the yeast for a new rising; for better bread and more profound circuses. They do not require well funded institutions to survive. All that is needed is the human urge to create and to learn. I watch my grandson, not yet two years old, at his intent play, and know that is not going to disappear any time soon.
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