Arts...Smarts

I tried to ignore this too…

I’ve never made a dime worth mentioning as an artist.

Oh yeah, I’ve earned all the beer and whiskey I can drink in a night by singing and playing the harmonica in a little bar every Sunday night in Mexico Beach, Florida for a while.

I even made tips equaling thirty or forty dollars a night for six months playing harmonica and doing backup vocals with “The Garage Band” in Atlanta in 1999-2000. Of course my bar tab easily equaled my earnings for the night in those days, so I broke even at best on that endeavor. Some people might have paid me more to stay home.

Today I write my blogs with no compensation, and my watercolor paintings and drawings have yet to cause a sensation at the local galleries so the term “starving artist” would be a self serving exaggeration--a gross overstatement at this point.

There are three local theater companies here in the Golden Isles, but I picked the most pompous, egotistical group of ingrates to spend a year of my life volunteering with—working for free behind the scenes and, as a result, my efforts were for naught.

Most of these idiots won’t even speak to me since I told everybody that was anybody to kiss my ass when I quit last March. Actually, I only told four really (self)IMPORTANT people to kiss my ass, but they told everybody else and as a group they've decided that I'm persona non grata.

Having said all of that, I still get crazy when I see and hear people talking about the importance of using government to steal money from its taxpayers to provide “funding for the ARTS.”

In the words of Charles Dickens…Bah Humbug.

This morning I was looking at The Office of the Governor’s Georgia Council for the Art Web Site and noticed something amazing.

In their fancy smancy intro page they present their “Seven compelling reasons to build support for the arts in Georgia”

Here they are:

1. The arts make money for Georgia.

2. The arts give students an edge in school.

3. The arts attract tourists.

4. The arts bring communities together.

5. Georgia celebrates its culture through the arts.

6. Industry wants the arts

7. The arts provide a return on public investment

What total crappola—who writes this stuff? If they only have one or two GOOD reasons, why not just come out and say so?

If I had the opportunity, here is what my response would be to these seven points:

1. IF “The arts make money for Georgia,” why am I paying for the arts?

2. I’ll agree that “The arts give (some) students an edge in school,” but making the grade of A+ in band class or drama class or in pottery still doesn’t elevate you above spending the next ten years asking “you want fries with that.”

3. IF “The arts attract tourists,” let the tourists buy some ART and pay for the arts themselves.

4. I agree that “The arts bring communities together.” So does a serial rapist and a direct strike by a hurricane, but I want nothing to do with either event.

5. IF “Georgia (wants to)celebrate its culture through the arts," let the Georgia participants and patrons pay fair market value for the arts.

6. IF “Industry wants the arts,” let industry pay for the arts.

7. IF “The arts provide a return on public investment” (i.e. spending money confiscated from taxpayers,) why not stop spending the tax money and start spending the profits. Isn’t profit what you get when you get a “return” on your investment?

Can you believe that anyone actually thinks like this and has the audacity to write it down?

I think that govenment "Arts" programs are responsible for most if not all of the hideous sculptures and ugly paintings that we find mounted on the walls of government buildings.


Body part or dog turd?

I would wager that most of the crap produced with the funding provided by the Georgia Council for the Arts is commercially unmarketable and, if it were not for the public payola, the so called artist(s) would be forced to start writing a blog or go back to work at the library racking books in order to afford food and gasoline.

I guess that I'm just a mean old bastard, aren't I?