Yikes! So the blog I started so that my intimates would know where I am in the world and would stop haranguing me as to the details of my trip has found, evidently, a wider audience. What's odd about this is that it would be odd to me. I'm from Detroit and watched with morbid fascination and disgust as Kwame Kilpatrick and his Chief-of-Staff, Christine Beatty, both graduates of my high school/my year, were caught in a text message scandal. I think I remember clucking something like, "The fools! Don't they know nothing is private??!!!" There must be medication for folks like me who fundamentally understand the danger and proceed as if the danger doesn't apply to them. Sigh. So here we are: me having written something that folks outside of my cadre of friends are reading and posting and sending around to God Knows Who (Hello, God Knows Who!)
Thankfully, Jeff Baker at the Oregonian wrote to tell me he was going to link to the blog today. So I've excerpted the stuff about the OBAs below (in part so that no one has to read through the rest of my life/thinking/craziness). I'm also removing the comments section for now because from what I see and understand about the internet, anonymity allows people to be, besides thoughtful, also mean, cruel. I'd rather give up the opportunity to interact with the thoughtful people than to have to hear one of the mean/cruel voices. Sorry. That's just me. I'm on sabbatical and am in a good mood today (after having gone to see two fantastic plays this weekend—Fela! and Let Me Down Easy).
Anyway, what follows is what I wrote. I've expanded a bit at the end (noted by the "UPDATE"). The original post is #19 and is, as I wrote, really long.
Excerpted from post #19: I have to admit that I sneaked into Oregon last weekend to attend the Oregon Book Award ceremony and promptly got so freaked out by the composition of the audience that I went out into the lobby and ate cookies (which were really very good). So I missed most of the ceremony including the poetry awards. It's a good thing Matt Dickman won. I was clear at the back and peeking in from the lobby.
Besides the requisite anger, I felt hurt. The lack of inclusion is hurtful, frankly. And as I age, I find it more so because I'm less willing to accept the "Well, it *is* Oregon" excuse I so often hear.
At this point and having seen so much of how the arts are sustained, promoted, and developed, I don’t actually accept that the lack of inclusion is not willful. Now I certainly don't mean to suggest that people are excluding folks of color. But not excluding and including are different principals. One is passive (that is, if you come, we won't exclude you) the other is active (we're going to do something to make sure you're included). At some point we have to take credit for the composition of our groups, institutions, etc. Composition doesn’t just happen. It’s developed. Just as a Board is developed and an audience is developed. So it is hurtful to know that the patrons, Board, and community that supports Literary Arts doesn’t develop a more diverse base of support, doesn't think it's worth the effort (and it would be an effort because Portland is in general challenged this way, but not that damned challenged). Anyway, I won’t be going to another of those ceremonies and I won’t support Literary Arts until they actually do decide to develop in ways I think are important for any healthy and vibrant arts community.
UPDATE:
As I said before, I'd thought that only my small group of friends was reading this blog. As it turns out, so was Andrew Proctor, the (very) new Executive Director of Literary Arts. How he got wind of it I have absolutely no idea. But he did. And he emailed me earlier in the week to reach out, offer to have lunch and talk about what I'd written. The point about passivity is, I think, where he paused. As I told him, I am traveling around this year (hence the blog) and won't be back in Oregon until middle-August 2010. But I'm quite happy to chat on the phone and/or via email.
I once did talk, at great length, with the former ED of Literary Arts about the kinds of writers they bring in. In particular we talked about the lack of writers of color and youngish, hip writers and youngish, hip writers of color. I gave her a long list of folks to think about. And we did, as a way of talking about authors, talk about audience development. Those two things seem inextricably bound to my way of thinking. For example, we talked about alternative programs that might pair emerging writers with the more famous writers Literary Arts is known to book. We talked about this as a possible way of enticing a younger and more culturally, ethnically and racially diverse audience base. But more programming in difficult financial times seems to me an unlikely proposal. Anyway, I did talk to her. She was nice and I liked her a lot.
I speak so firmly about organizations being passive or active because as someone who has been on the boards of two Oregon arts organizations and is affiliated with a college not known for its ethnic and racial diversity—at the faculty or student level—I know a great deal about passivity, have fought and continue to fight against it. If you simply wait for things to happen, they won't. That's a fact. Well, okay, things will happen like Mother Nature might drop a tree on your car or the sun might shine for ten days in the middle of January, but people of color aren't suddenly going to decide that they are going to join the board, buy season tickets, involve themselves in your school or organization. One or two might. But in this instance, we're not talking about one or two who might stumble on the thing. We're talking about attracting and involving a group of folks. People—all people—involve and implicate themselves in organizations and institutions that they feel are working for them and with them in mind. I find this, too, to be a fact.
This last point is a little sticky because fundamentally it suggests that there is a direct correlation between, in this case, which writers the organization brings in and who supports the organization. I'm a little lopsided on this and should probably broaden the argument a bit.
As a long time patron of the arts (I have photos of me and mom in matching formal wear--that's how old I am, you dressed to go to the theatre when I was little!), an arts organization does not have to bring in African Americans and or art made by African Americans in order to interest me. That is clearly not the case. Nor would I want it to be the case. How boring. Likewise, the opposite is true: I don't think that white people (oh, I'm using the most simple and dominate race-based terms here, but you can certainly think about this in terms of any racial/ethnic group) stop supporting a theatre because one season it boasts a couple of plays by people of color.
But I do think that patrons of the arts fundamentally understand what the artistic mission of an organization is and we get that understanding by who/what is put before us.
Oh, let me try to articulate this another way. One of my favorite theatres in the country is Steppenwolf. It's my favorite because while I don't always love what I see there, the artistic mission—to be inclusive, to bring new, interesting and talented voices to the fore, is so evident by their season line-up that I get excited. As a person who loves the arts, I want to see art by everybody and Steppenwolf does everybody magnificently. So I buy a season ticket. So I send them money. So I stomp and shout, "Steppenwolf." I suppose you could also say it is a mater of trust. I trust that Steppenwolf's artistic mission is in line with my vision of what the world is: a diverse, complex, exciting place full of many, many kinds of people. I wish I could feel that about a Portland based arts organization (and I'm only talking about the mainstream ones in this case. I'm fully aware of Milagro Theatre and IFCC, for example...). Instead, I sneak back into town to attend an awards ceremony and am struck by how not everybody it is.
Or, more broadly, when I came back to Oregon from having lived in Chicago in 2005, I looked at the season line-ups for Portland theatres and thought, "Okay, but clearly, not particularly inviting or inclusive (and because it wasn't inviting or inclusive) or interesting." So I don't go to theatre in Oregon. I fly to Chicago or New York. And boy does that get expensive. Probably I should be going down to Ashland more. Inviting, interesting, inclusive: Ashland. Yes. So if Ashland can do it, um, why not Portland.
Anyway, the original point from three paragraphs above is that while I feel unsteady suggesting a reductive correlation between programming and base of support as it relates to race and ethnicity, (reductive like saying: only black people read Alice Walker, which is goofy), when it comes to arts organizations which proffer a product (a play, a reading, a dance performance, a concert, etc...), I do feel that programming represents artistic vision. And artistic vision is directly related to audience development. So I can imagine a theatre saying, for example: if our artistic goal is to represent the best of American theater, then we bring to our stage the best, most diverse (because if we're representing America and America is diverse...) range of plays we can find that support that mission.
And that sort of inclusiveness requires that that theater take an active role in programming plays that represent its mission. It means their artistic director has to have big eyes, wide arms, reach for things and ideas that might not be in their normal repertoire. Artistic vision is something to take very seriously. There's lots at stake. And it means that either Portland arts step up to the world's stage or it doesn't.
I've tried to broaden this argument because I don't think it's at all and/or only about Literary Arts. I think most of Portland's arts organizations fail in this regard. And fail miserably. And that, I have to say, is still hurtful. It will probably always be hurtful until something significant changes, someone broadens their arms, some Board decides to make a real effort (which of course, requires hard, hard work and some pie in the face, and then more hard work).
My friend Martha told me that all things happen for a reason and that it was a good thing that I went. It certainly didn't feel like a good thing. But then sometimes good things are like that, I suppose. They feel crappy, but turn out for the best. Go figure.
For now, I'm quite happy to be immersing myself in NYCs arts/theater scene, which is magnificent and feels as if I've stepped into America, full blast and lovely as it is.
To my old-timer-blog cohort: My Love. To God Knows Who: My love, too, ;-)
C
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