« A Buyer's World | Main | True Lies »
Dancing in the Rain
In my occasional role as an arts advocate, people ask me to speak about why the arts matter. Yesterday, I gave an informal talk here in Park City, Utah for the Performing Arts Foundation.
For once, I felt like I had something important and meaningful to say. I told the story I'm going to tell you here, along with a few observations and insights it brought me:
Wednesday evening, Wendy and I went up to Deer Valley to hear an outdoor concert headlined by Bonnie Raitt and opened by Keb' Mo'.
When we arrived, it was a beautiful evening, but as anyone who has spent much time in the Rocky Mountains can attest, if you don't like the weather, wait fifteen minutes.
We were sitting on the hillside - with about 5,000 of our closest friends - enjoying a picnic. I had that "pinch me, this isn't real" feeling, because I was gazing out over one of the most beautiful places I could imagine, having God's handiwork improved by a Marlborough Country, New Zealand wine. Crispy bread, creamy brie, and scrumptious beef were in the picnic basket. I had a glass of wine in one hand, and my wife's hand in the other.
I was thinking to myself, "Life doesn't get any better than this," and then, Keb' Mo' started to play the blues. I make no secret of the fact that Keb' Mo' is one of my favorite blues artists. He can make a guitar sing a torch song, weep, then strip. And his band - oh my God.
I'd noticed a song or two into the set that storm clouds had rolled in. It started to sprinkle. Teri Orr, the Foundation's Executive Director, took the stage to tell us that the storm was rolling in fast and would roll out fast. A few minutes later, it started to rain - a real large-dropped, attack-your-back, coldwater, mountain rain.
We were woefully unprepared, but better than some. We had a big blue acrylic blanket that shed the rain pretty good. We'd stood up, and about two minutes later a kissy dating couple, two red-headed 2-year old, stroller-bound boys, their mothers, and about eight others huddled with us under our blanket, making jokes (and making out in one case). A few "your hands are COLD" comments leaked out along with some throaty giggling. It rained like billy-be-damned.
While Mo' was playing, I watched a lot of people in the open air dance in the rain. And I mean dance - the kind of wet-denim, dangerous-hipped, groove knockin' dancing that turns raindrops to steam. These people were too deep in bliss for the rain to matter.
When you can see people light their inner fires, espress their bliss, and not run for cover in the cold and breezy mountain rain, you don't need any fancy arguments about why the arts matter. All you need are open eyes and an understanding heart. All you need is the ability to see another human being's need to be wet in their own joy, and alive in their own body.
Well, the rain blew over and nobody left. Bonnie Raitt came on and was indescribably delicious. If there is a more generous or gracious woman in the arts today, I don't know who it is. Man alive, her music was amazing. She gave us all something to talk about.
It sounds unbelievable, but as Bonnie sang, a double rainbow appeared over the mountains. The moon rose. I can't describe it any better than Bonnie Raitt did. She looked at the moon, she looked at the crowd, and in that throaty signature voice of hers she observed, "This is biblical."
At the end of the concert, the rains returned. The crowds surged forward, and the dancing started again. A huddling, loving audience warmed themselves in Bonnie Raitt and Keb' Mo's duets and in each other's body heat. Everybody was moving, but nobody was leaving. It was a staying moment and - in my head - it will never leave.
So much of life conspires to disconnect us from ourselves. A culture of acquisition preaches that BMWs, two carat diamonds, and designer dog sweaters will make us happy. Technology may have consigned geographical distance to irrelevance, but motherboards aren't mother's breasts and never will be. You can suckle on technology's teat, but the milk won't nourish you. A touchscreen works one way; you touch, but you're not touched.
Even now, as I try to describe what it was like watching the tender, sexy resilience of that Park City Crowd dancing in the rain, I am left looking at a cursor and text, but my mind's eye still dances with the people I watched Wednesday night.
It's not my point to say that creative capital doesn't matter. Likewise, I don't mean that all the other instrumental benefits that a robust arts community creates for communities aren't real nor important. They are.
What I understood Wednesday night was that a lot of us have gotten the arguments wrong. When creative economies flourish it's a symptom, not a cause. I believe that an enboldened, joyful spirit creates the impact that drives those numbers.
People who are alive in their bodies who are connected to each other in community feel affluent in a more profound way. Their affluence can be seen in the ripple of healthy muscles and big smiles. Money won't bring you joy, but joy will bring you money.
Posted on September 1, 2006 11:58 AM | Permalink
Bookmark with: 
del.icio.us, 
StumbleUpon, 
digg
Comments
Rock on, Neill!
Bonnie Raitt and Keb' Mo' are indeed the kind of transformative performers that can inspire the kind of joy that you and Wendy witnessed. But your point is more important (though that would be important enough, really).
Those of us who work to facilitate the connection between artists and audiences know one thing for sure: when the connection is made, there is nothing—and I mean NOTHING—like it. We want to connect with artists because they see the world in ways that most of us cannot, and we want a glimpse into their world, even if it's for just a couple hours in a theatre—or on a rain-swept mountainside.
We go to arts events, ever hopeful that we're going to have one of those magical experiences, Most of the time, we probably don't; let's face it, as my mom, a opera teacher, used to tell her students, "Every day ain't Christmas." But once in a while, when we're together sharing that communal whatever-it-is, it IS Christmas, and more. It's what keeps us coming back.
I (like you I'm sure Neill) lived (and still does on occasion) on the other side of the coin as a performer. While we never did play theatres or stadiums, the bars in Northern Ontario were our theatre.
Back in the 1970's, if you had a band back there, you were booked at least 2 years in advance for gigs. Then came the DJ's with their one-man music machine. The bands dried up, there were no gigs and the scene dried up...
The DJ, like technology you mention, has its limitations. The audience cannot interact with the DJ, there is not much of a show (apart from a few flashy lights) and basically rehashes music that you've before in its form. (Now I do need to specify that the DJ's I talk about are the ones that spin the hits - they are not the ones that mix and make music on the fly in house clubs.)
When we played, we put on a show, we played songs that people knew and could dance to, we had the crowd sing a long, we stretched the songs out if people liked it, we played in the crowd (including playing slide guitar with someone's beer bottle, having a shot with an audience member WHILE playing the guitar with my left hand only), we did things that warrant run-on sentences such as this one.
Bottom line, we played for the crowd, to the crowd and with the crowd - something the DJ's that replaced those bands back home could not do.
And you can sense the connection; people cheering when something is heard, countless handshakes and hi-fives among them and with us, the "you're the best band on the planet comments" between sets. We gave them a "good time" that a DJ could not.
This could be another example of how technology won't touch you back. You can shake hands with the band that played the tunes you loved, but you can't shake hands with a CD.