Seeds of hope in Art.

 

Seeds of hope in Art.

My friend and brother-in-law Danny passed away recently. He used to talk a lot about people and governments wasting money on art. I liked Danny very much, but we didn’t agree. Art contributed significantly to my life.

In my early days, art was not what it is today. Some people had paintings, most had none. We heard music when someone had an instrument and sang, but most people never been to a live performance such as the theatre or a concert. Those who did talked about it for years. Literature was more widespread since folks borrowed books and read them. You read what you could get your hands on and didn’t have the choices available today in the information age. I remember listening to plays on the radio, when we finally had one.

Movies slowly made their way to us, but it was only in the early sixties that we began to see coloured films made in Hollywood. Slowly the Cowboy and Indian movies gave way to truly artistic productions, which played more wholesome productions often built around classical plays and inspired us. At home, some of us acquired record players and folks could hear music that was popular around the world. Musicals arrived in force and even poor people could treat themselves.

The show that changed my life was inspired by a play called Pygmalion and was named My Fair Lady. It inspired a generation. Most of us, like the generations before us, believed that one was born into a spot in life and will remain there till you die, but My Fair Lady changed it. It gave some of us hope. A person could change themselves and build a new life based on hard work, education, and of course luck. True art does that.

My Fair Lady is set in London, England, when the British Empire was at its high point and the aristocracy mingled with the rich elite while the poor supplied both with a richness we can hardly imagine. A poor flower girl, a gutter snake, meets a language professor who is willing to bet that he can turn her into a duchess by teaching her to talk and behave. At the end of the teaching experiment, she graduates. High British society is fooled, and Eliza Doolittle is passed for a princess. She finds out that the empty shell of the high class is an illusion that works because it’s maintained by the people. “The difference between a common flower girl and a lady is not how she behaves, but how she is treated.”

I was a young teenager when I first saw My Fair Lady and didn’t speak a word in English. I read the translation in the subtitles and understood enough. My station in life was much like Eliza’s but the movie gave me hope. Learn how to talk properly, keep yourself clean, maintain good manners and the door will open. Have the guts to take chances, use your God’s gift of intellect, and be concerned with how you treat others. Let the cards be reshuffled and keep your hand close to your chest. Your hopes will materialize, but never in the way you thought they will. God specializes in creating surprises. His job is to keep you interested in the life he gave you, and he will. The more you try to push him the more he will show you that He is running the show, not you.

Life is a game much like poker. Skill is important, but one never knows which cards will be dealt. More important, others don’t know your cards either, and winning involves the ability to read other people correctly. Self-control can easily be the most important skill needed for success. Some people say that you must know yourself. In My Fair Lady, you learn that the most important life skill is to conquer yourself. Life and luck made you what you are, but you must remake yourself into what you want to be. When you do, it is up to the new you to use your knowledge in the right way.

As I said, you never know for sure that you will win. Luck plays a part. If you learned to play well, you calculate your chances and be OK with losing, since you will also win. Be ready to face reality and patiently wait for your turn to win. The play/movie taught another very important lesson. A human is not a calculating computer, it is an organism powered by emotions. One can’t calculate what love will do.

I went on remodeling myself the best I could and luckily my Adult Education English teacher assigned us Pygmalion to study and dissect. Art is not just some pretty decoration or a cute story, it teaches people important lessons about life. The art consumer is in charge of figuring out the lesson and incorporating it into life.

My Fair lady followed a successful play by Bernard Shaw who himself copied the idea from a much older classical Greek play. The movie was very expensive to make, and some great minds contributed significant knowledge from a variety of intellectual fields. For the price of a movie ticket and investment of two hours, the public, including me, learned condensed knowledge accumulated over generations of human existence.

Now I am an old man reminiscing about the times in which I faced forks in the road and had to choose a direction and live with my choices. My dear friend Danny lived without art and he did alright considering what our society values. A home, a family, vacations, and granite countertops in the kitchen. He could never contemplate what I am telling you here and I consider it a loss. I rest my case and say, dig in friends and learn what the artists worked hard to teach you. It is more important than the things you purchase and show your friends.

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