At a concert in Erie, Pennsylvania, Carolyn Arends sang a song called "In Good Hands." Afterward, the church’s custodian stopped by. "When you was singing that song about Jesus’ hands," he said, "the sun was setting behind you, and it was making them stained glass pictures of Jesus glow. The sound of your buddy’s violin was bouncing off these stone walls, and, well, you was saying more than you was even saying."
Ever experienced one of those moments? It can be a little surreal. Sometimes it’s planned and sometimes it just… happens. But either way, you wonder if you were the only one who got it? The only one who saw the connection of the soon-fading dots?
Someone once told me we need beauty as much as we need bread. The hungry and poor need bread—and they need roses, too. Since The Garden, our collective DNA has been programmed and instructed to cultivate. To grow. To create C out of A and B…and a little X.
What seems to worry some, is that in this economic crunch time of spending freezes, job layoffs and financial survival, extraneous frivolities like ‘art’ and ‘creativity’ may be on the chopping block in favor of survival. After all, who is going to spend money to send their kids to Music Camp when money for groceries is tight?
In her article, she quotes Karl Paulnack (Boston Conservatory of Music):
"Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? … And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art … Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life."
It’s a GREAT article. You can read it here.
