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Art and Culture Live
This morning, Sunday, LOML and I had a discussion about art. It was a coffee-infused exchange of opinions. We weren’t “on about” one particular style, or medium, just about art—all kinds of art. Now some of you may be thinking that would be a very unfocused conversation and, in a way, it sorta/kinda was. I was telling him about our friend, an opera-singer-at-heart and lover of all music, especially opera, who was appalled that anyone would discount a piece of music, a performer or a medium, simply because it/he/she was Russian. I stepped away from the Facebook conversation because I’m still trying to find my way through this clash of culture and ideologies happening in the world, right now. I know you’re having a tough time believing I’d step away from a controversial discussion, but I did. And, yes, I know it’s more than being about culture and art, but keeping it simple is something I can handle. I decided to watch the opinions pile up in the comments section and maybe learn something along the way.
By our second, maybe our third, cup of Joe our conversation twirled back to my days in secondary school when I rebelled against the teachers’ questions with regard to what we happened to be reading. The question almost always went something like this, “Okay class, close your books and tell me what do you think the author was trying to say in this chapter?” Gosh, how I hated that question, then. How I hate that question now. I was always in favour of a bit of a backgrounder on the times and/or the author’s life, the author’s style. I really didn’t like that question and just got PO’d whenever I could see it coming. Maybe I was being lazy. I never enjoyed dissecting a good read in the middle of the “good read”. It seemed far too simplistic and far too “teachers’ college” to me. I often wondered why our English Lit teacher hadn’t started with an introduction to the life and the times of the author before we were asked the “what was the writer thinking” question. Deep down I felt we’d been short-changed by this lack of information. How the H E double hockey sticks would I know the underpinnings of a creator’s art/style if my senior class English Literature teacher didn’t dish up the goods before we started reading. And so it is with Russian Art and Culture, right this moment. I refuse to close the book on Russian art or culture. Firstly, we need the pictures, the paintings, the musings, the music, the novels, the poetry, the geography, the history, the language, the dance and the food to understand the people. Discounting the beauty, art and culture of a country because of a “mafia-leading pariah, a tyrannical authoritarian, an autocratic murderous pile of malodorous garbage” isn’t something I want to do, and neither should you. Whew.
My point is, and I do have one, the ordinary, everyday people of Russia are simply people like you and me. They go to work, they shop for essentials, they raise their families, they make art, they build, they live, they learn and they dream. I can’t imagine they would want to be isolated from the rest of the world. And, for the most part, they don’t know they’ve been isolated from the rest of the world since Putin took power. For the most part, if they knew the truth, they wouldn’t want to be involved in a deadly conflict against innocent people, who essentially, are the same people as we all are. And, like I said, mostly the ordinary people of Russia don’t know much about what’s going on outside of their country because they are living in a world where the news they get isn’t really “the news”. However, it appears that people in over thirty cities around Russia are openly protesting the conflict against Ukraine. The news was getting through to them. And recently, over three thousand Russian civilian citizens have been jailed because of their involvement in the protests against this horrific genocide.
Now it’s early Monday morning. I have decided I’m not going to banish everything Russian from my life. My life is richer, more colourful and far more interesting because of the art and culture from all countries. Art influences our opinions. Art instills values and brings experiences across borders and through time. Art and culture positively affect our sense of self. Art is our collective memory.
Putin cannot erase the culture or the beauty if we choose to keep it alive.
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