Economy

Sorry!  I wrote this last Friday and then posted it incorrectly!

Today is Friday, the last day of the semester(!) We’re exactly halfway through the school year and I haven’t posted nearly enough entries on this blog.  I’ll try to do better.

We had our weekly all-school meeting today in the theatre.  Along with the usual list of things like International dinner, Visual artist performance show, movie night, LACMA trips, that needed to be publicized, we had lists of perfect attendance read…  (Two of my fine piano students were mentioned, one of my advisees…) Anyway, we also had a presentation by our school president about the state of our economy(the world’s) and its effect on our program(the school’s.)

I was struck by how very lucky we are to be here together.  In a time of world crisis, loss of jobs, teetering markets, I’m surrounded by creative people.  I mean our faculty and staff, people who are able to see themselves in many ways, to reinvent themselves and ways of doing things, to find new ways out of old problems.  And I mean our students–the people that have the genes to be innovators, and who we’re teaching to be the problem solvers of tomorrow.  Whether they become professional painters or broadway stars or not, they will have the vision and resiliency to succeed in this rapidly changing world.  This is because they can see possibilities and imagine what they’ve never seen or experienced.  I worry for the future of  students who’ve only been taught the tried and true solutions to problems, who’ve not been taught to be critical, to think, to wonder.

Some of the greatest works of art in our world have grown out of the struggle against the rigidity of economy.  Economy of materials, of form, of function.  A Haydn symphony is a work of wonder confined by a rigid format.  A black and white photo can be so much more magical than one in color.  An Eames chair is perfect to look at, but it’s also a perfect simple solution for something to sit on.

We’ll get through this economic crisis together, I’m sure of it.  We’ll be better teachers because of it.  We’ll be better students because of it.  We’ll be better artists because of it.