THE FUNDAMENTAL POINT OF CULTURE

ARTIST OR FINANCIER?

Recently, the Canadian government increased by 400% its funding for the arts, while arts funding in Australia and the UK continues to be slashed; this has led to a massive wave of joy and exuberant hope among the Canadian artists I know - musicians, composers, dancers, painters, poets, writers.... hope that in America we assume will not bear fruit in 2017, as Trump slashes cultural funding ever more.

Justin Trudeau gets culture, and I am proud he is our PM in Canada.

However, there is a different intensity of vision, which I have, and share no doubt with other practitioners of the creative arts and industries. It is this, simply this: Cultural and Creative production, activities, processes, projects are not just one other thing to do, not a hobby, a side-line, an option, but, actually - THE HIGHEST ENDEAVOUR OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.

Scientific and medical research is incredibly vital; religious meditation and conjecture equally so. But only the arts can fuse thought and feeling, knowledge and desire, hope and experience, in always-new forms - not as off-shoot expressions, or a way to kill a few hours. The Arts make us more human.

Artists are often mad and bad - I am not saying they should rule or guide. But the fact of there being creativity is essential. It is my highest good to publish books, by others, and by myself. Books change the world, as do films, albums, plays, ballets, operas, installations, happenings, games...

In a way alternative to actual war. Aleppo's disastrous fall reminds us that even after WWI, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and Vietnam, and Rwanda, and 9/11 - we do not learn easily. Science has not restrained the killing fields; religion has not halted the bloodshed. Politics has fanned flames. Creativity may not have fared any better, but few if any dancers, painters, poets, and musicians choose to become soldiers if other options lie open to them.

I am not naïve. But as we move to a jobless future, where most roles, including that of warrior, will be filled by a robot, humans will need to return to a recognition of the central vocation of teaching, nurturing, and exploring, creativity and creation - AS A GOOD IN AND OF ITSELF.

Only the Arts can fully contain truth and fiction, ugliness and beauty, in the same forms and formats - it is in fact the duality and complex ambiguity of the created thing, that it is real and a replica, that allows it to be so porous, flexible, and open to interpretation, and appreciation - enhancing its value endlessly.

Humanity has undervalued the natural and the created worlds, for the sake of the industrial-technological-financial; but the brute instruments must make way for the delicate instruments of making.

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise...

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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