Something in our nature inclines almost all of us toward the arts, much the way that correctly prepared cornbread inspires acts of heroism among Southerners.
Of course, not everyone wants to engage in the actual labor of mixing Martha White, Crisco, Mayfield, eggs and a touch of Hellmann’s – the mayo and a cast-iron skillet are the secret, folks – to make a worthy cornbread. But everyone is happy to partake of a slice with a side of pintos.
In similar manner, not everybody wants to be a musician or painter, but almost everybody knows what he likes in music and visual art. And the fact that we enjoy art has a way of making it manifest itself, organically and unrestricted, in everything from coffee tables teeming with Mickey Spillane novels to Neil Diamond medleys offered from the confines of the shower, where their destructive potential is limited.
So I’m not sure what to make of the fact, reported in the Times Free Press, that “Allied Arts of Greater Chattanooga has convened a blue-ribbon panel that will spend the next eight months charting the future of the arts for the Chattanooga and Hamilton County region.”
Really? That’s quite an undertaking.
It would never have occurred to me that any group could chart the future of the arts for any area, because no organization can possibly keep track of, much less coordinate, every expression of the arts in a community. If Loretta Lynn taught us anything (besides how to avoid going to Fist City), it’s that art at its best springs from the grassroots. Yet Allied Arts declares that it “provides a united voice for all cultural organizations and activities in Hamilton County.”
Fine, but did anybody tell that to the cultural organizations and activities?
I for one welcome Allied Arts’ participation in the local arts scene, and I imagine it’s doing some good – though I’d prefer that it do its work without taxpayer-provided stimulus dollars. But vast artistic endeavors that take place in the county every day were never mapped out by, funneled through or supported by any umbrella arts organization.
I’m thinking, for one example, of the thousands of Hamilton Countians who practice hours on end for regular presentations of music in churches, plus the passels of instrumentalists who accompany them and the tens of thousands of people who listen to them. I’d guess at least as much live art gets produced and consumed in that setting as it does anywhere hereabouts.
Granted, most congregations never got any money from the stimulus – and good judgment forces me to pause before suggesting that every tenor on every Sunday morning praise team is ready for Carnegie Hall. But church choirs are engaged in art, they’re an integral part of our culture, and they’re probably doing as much to inspire youngsters to take up music as any other effort in the community could hope to do. (For further reading, see “Raymond, Usher” and “Parton, Dolly.”)
The point is, art has a way of popping up here, there and everywhere as a fulfillment of a human need. More than anything else, that natural impulse will chart the future of the arts for Hamilton County.
Have you ever been Mallo?
No horror exceeds that of realizing one nanosecond too late that you’ve punched the snack machine button not for a desired Milky Way but for a dreaded Mallo Cup.
Who eats those things?
A friend finds their combination of marshmallow, coconut and chocolate so petrifying that he pondered, “They should go ahead and put a pitted prune in the center.”
To which I replied, “It would take your mind off the rest of it at least.”
No thanks, I’m stuft
Speaking of culinary alarm, it’s bad enough to find a menu item that begins “mushroom-stuffed [insert pasta, meat or vegetable of your choice].”
But it’s even worse when the description begins “mushroom-stuft … .”
That’s when you know you’re really in trouble.