Posted by Ed Sabato
on 9/24/2001, 12:42 pm
Ray,
Please share this with anyone you know who creates,
participates in, or
enjoys the arts. It meant a lot to me and I hope that
it helps them with
their focus and life balance in times like these.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Sunday, September 23, 2001
Editorial
Making sense of life
Archive | Editorial
When the sound and fire of collapsing skyscrapers
stopped, there was no
music. There was no poetry, dance or monologue.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Broadway
theaters drew their curtains.
Concert tours and art exhibitions were canceled. The
hush, at least for a
while, was needed.
But as surely as Americans once sat under the apple
tree, they'll find ways
to soothe their wounds through the arts. They must use
the arts.
Soon after the attacks, students at New York
University's Tisch School of
Arts wondered what was the point of studying dance,
photography, film and
its kin when such destruction billowed only blocks
away.
Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell, a former Philadelphian,
gave this memorable
answer. Artists, she said, "find forms and means of
expressing what
otherwise seems completely inexpressible or make
intelligible what seems
unintelligible."
Few events on U.S. soil are as unintelligible as
turning planes into
missiles and plotting to kill thousands of innocents.
And, so, art helps as it heals.
What survivors cannot get themselves to feel today,
they may be able to
release tomorrow when they hear the haunting tones of
Samuel Barber's
"Adagio for Strings," played at Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's funeral in 1945.
It, too, was played last weekend at a splendid
Philadelphia Orchestra
concert to benefit victims of the attack.
What all Americans find puzzling tomorrow, a play or
novel may clarify in
the months or years to come.
Donald Anderson, writer-in-resident at the Air Force
Academy, also has to
explain to his students why the arts matter in their
lives. He tells them
that the freedom to create art "is a miracle in the
long haul of history. I
tell them they're defending libraries."
Americans already are using arts to feed a new hunger
for patriotism. Though
the time may not be right just yet, they'll rely on
them, too, for making
sense of the senseless and moving on with life.
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