A Grove of Ashes and Aspens

Now Playing: At the Court of the Wild Hunt by Elvenking

So, here we are once again. The start of a new academic year. This time last year, I was just starting the Music Industry Arts program at Algonquin College, and I thought it was going to be really cool to be sitting in front of that same classroom in front of the next graduating class the following September, telling them how this program changed my life for the better. Instead, what I got was the program getting cut in the middle of the year, and uncertainty on what would happen with any classes that my friends needed to retake or whether we would get the refunds we were promised for the maintenance fees we had to pay that were effectively made worthless.

Now, what does this mean going forward? Well, a few things.

First, it means that my classmates and I will probably have our work cut out for us in the upcoming years. With the lack of new hands coming into the industry after us and (some of) those who taught us approaching rapidly approaching retirement age, there’s going to be a gap in the industry that we’re going to be lacking the new hands to fill.

Second, and more importantly, it confirms something we already knew: those in power don’t care about the arts. I shall explain.

So those of us who are in the arts know how important this shit is. We see how many people listen to music in their daily lives. We see how many people read books and fanfiction. We see how album covers and blogs like this and online reactions influence people to try new music. We see how popular audiobooks are. We see how popular shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20 and L.A. By Night are. Those are all made possible because of the people who decided they wanted to go into the arts.

And yet so much of society still looks at the arts as just some fun, frivolous thing that doesn’t deserve the same degree of funding as something like research into diseases or politics or law or business.

Now before you go eating me alive, those things are also important and deserve funding. I will never argue against that. But are they really so much more important than the arts that we have to fund them over anything artistic? Are they really so much more important than the arts that artists have to live in poverty and take whatever shit jobs they just so that they can survive? Is that really the society we want to live in?

If we look at societies of the past, yes, it is true that many artists and composers lived and died in poverty, only gaining notoriety after their deaths. But many of them were also quite wealthy, being paid quite well by nobles, royalty, and high ranking church officials to compose new music and write new stories and make new paintings and sculptures all the time. There were also plenty of societies in history where artists and musicians were some of the only people who could openly critique those in power and get away with it. For a long time, the artists were the most powerful citizens of their nations.

And now, in the modern day, the arts don’t have that same power anymore. Sure, artists can still openly critique those in power and get away with it, but they don’t have the same pull they once did. And that’s because of money.

Money dictates power, and has for a long time. Those with money (and, therefore, power) in the past would often pay artists handsomely to have a story be on their side. (Many artists would still find ways to slip their own thoughts and narratives in there, but that’s not the point here.) Now, in the last 20 or so years (at least), those with money and power are telling us that we don’t need artists, we don’t need musicians, we need doctors and lawyers and scientists. (Some of them only want the doctors and lawyers and scientists who agree with them, but again, not the point here.) And yes, we do need doctors and lawyers and scientists and engineers and construction workers and plumbers and electricians and so on. Those people are all different parts of what makes up a functioning society.

But what is society without art? What is society without music? Is a nation truly living if the people don’t have stories to be shared? Is a nation truly a cohesive society if the people have no way to share their stories while being seen as inherently worthy of life for sharing those stories?

My answer to that is no, you can’t have a truly functioning and thriving society without art. If there is no art, there is no society. There are cities and nations and clusters of people, sure, but there is no society. Art is what makes us who we are. Art is the reason I do what I do. Sharing my journey and who I am at my core is why I make my music and why I do my writing, and many others in the arts would agree with me. This is who we are as people.

If we don’t have the arts, we don’t have a living, breathing culture.

Until next week, embrace your wyrd. Three ways to magick.