A Clanging Cymbal, a Noisy Gong
On Wednesday Will and I hoofed it down to the Paramount Theater on Congress after work to take part in a Candidates Forum on the arts in Austin. The mayoral candidates and a handful of the city council candidates showed up.
I haven’t found a way to write about it, because I have’t really understood my reactions to it. I was disappointed of course, because that’s my default reaction to any event that promises anything. No political event a month out from an election is going to do anything other than get the candidates over, and in an electoral process that will see 12-15% of the eligible voters participate? Maybe pick up some votes and some word of mouth. Hell, the format of the event didn’t even allow for audience Q&A though the candidates later broke protocol.
So yes I was bound to be disappointed. There were very few moments throughout the night where anything that even rose to the level of interesting happened. I list them now:
David Buttross (#4 of five in my current mayoral race chart) continued to run his incubator space concept up the flagpole. Which is a wonderful thing ($200 a month with all utilities including wifi) but honestly it was a night for the candidates to preach common sense, so I leave you with: “We need to stop putting out a wish list of arts ideas on the table and paying 20% of all of it. We need to sit down with the arts community, say here’s how much money we have how can we spend it most productively.”
Amen and Amen. Until a patron comes along for Austin Arts to give each independent group and artist grants, we need to behave ourselves, and sometimes sacrifice for the greater good.
Brewster McCracken, one of the three actual possible Mayors, kept trying to use the Armadillo World Headquarters site, “THAT THE CITY ALREADY OWNS!” for a variety of things, I think the night ended up with it being a multilevel parking / performance / incubator / display space. But on a more rational, physically possible, level he also talked about VMU on Congress Avenue to add performance and gallery space, along with parking. The treatment of North Congress in this town is bizarre. There are a handful of anchor restaurants, but in general, North of the river rolls up at 5:00. We can fix that.
Now the third thing that got me excited, and the only one that has legs so far as I’m concerned, was a throw-away from Brewster Mccracken after the evening had vaguely devolved into nothingness. I paraphrase “I would have the City, rather than grant to companies directly, purchase tickets from them and give those tickets away to the community.”
Read it again.
Rather than a flat out grant, the proposal would have the City buy tickets, and then give them away through some central location.
Money would still come to the group, and the City would funnel folks who wouldn’t necessarily come see our work anyway our direction. Let me say this as clearly as I can: Cambiare Productions would donate tickets to the City to make such a program work. We need attention more than we need money. With attention we could be self sufficient. I need a 50% match to make it on 200 paid per show, I can break even on 400 paid, I can pay people for 600 paid.
So YES to this solution.
But I want to close by explaining my post title for the Biblically challenged. It’s from 1 Corinthians 13: The Love Chapter, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
The single biggest thing you can do Council members, future Mayor, civic leaders to help the arts in Austin? Show up. We need the imprimatur of respectability. We need to not be compared to 3rd grade art class, and as important as arts education is to the growing of our future audience, you need to not lump current practitioners of the arts in with 3rd graders doing ballet.
I know you were doing it to be funny and charming. I don’t care how self-deprecating you want to be. We’re doing this now we’re not developing, we’re here. Attend the opening of Grapes of Wrath at Zach Scott and talk about it. Then move down the street and see something at the Vortex or at Salvage Vanguard, and talk about it.
Playing Mother Ginger at the Long Center isn’t ‘love of the arts’, it a photo op. That one time you saw Stevie Ray at Antone’s when you were 12 isn’t ‘love of the arts’ it’s a kickass concert.
Go see something besides ballet and opera. Get out among the unwashed doing this for free and see what the soul of this City is all about, and maybe then I’ll feel better about having to vote for one of you. Attend one locally produced arts event for every 3 Longhorns sporting events you get comped to. As it is? I’ll have to vote knowing that the candidates couldn’t name the top 5 groups in my field. And that’s more than enough reason to be disappointed.
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