In even the best of times, Arts education in the public school system is always in jeopardy of suffering in the face of budgetary concerns. And now, when the economy is strained, we hear stories daily of school districts all over the country slashing funding for music, theater, and art departments. In order to save these programs many advocates are forced to inject new feeling into the same arguments, hoping that the school boards to whom they are presenting their cases will be somehow be moved to spare the axe and find some hidden funding to keep these necessary projects afloat. Unfortunately, these arguments are as compelling as they are predictable. Having just seen Werner Herzog's amazing Cave of Forgotten Dreams, it occurred to me that there is a novel argument to make in defense of the arts.
Imagine us, 40,000 years ago. For reference sake, the Sumerians set up shop 8,500 years ago, and the early dynastic Egyptians began knocking around about 8,000 years ago. So, consider the circumstances. No farming, clothing made from hides, basic tools, a rudimentary language, and definitely no writing. Basic hunting and gathering. And lots of hiding in caves. Dawn to dusk, the primary focus would have been finding something to eat and somewhere safe to sleep.
And yet, for no reason, at least none that would aid in either of the above listed preoccupations, we drew. On the walls. Of a cave. Not handprints, which are a remarkable step in their own right. Drawing.
A charred torch is scraped on a wall to be relit. It makes a mark. And then something happened. There was a moment, before which we were one way. After, another. Someone, who other than being terribly dirty looked a lot like us, in an idle hour, decided they wouldn't spend their evening picking bugs out of someone's hair or staring at the fire. Decided. To take a charred stick and DRAW ON THE WALL. To have some idea of the wonder of this moment, watch any 2 year old learn to scribble. And then name their scribbles. And then at around 3 years-old, to try to make a shape that they have seen. At some point around 40,000 years ago, this didn't happen. And then it did.
What did we draw and why? Not plans for a hunt. Or even each other. With nothing to be gained other than the primal pleasure of itself, we drew pictures of animals. And not a catalog of what to be wary of. Just what we had seen. Over an over again. Different animals, some running, some fighting. Horses neighing. Imagine the moment when other duties waited. When others in the tribe would watch the person at the cave wall, rapt in a shaky fire's light. Waiting to see what would appear from the end of a stick. From memory, an image would appear, then another, the faces of the witnesses slowly betraying a recognition of something outside, from before, glimpsed once. Perhaps run from. Or towards. Or being clubbed to death. Or torn apart and skinned and placed on a stick and held in a fire until it tasted...different. Or just lying dead on the ground. But definitely, and most importantly, not present. At that moment, a conversation occurred, before conversation ever occurred, between a person making an image and those recognizing what that image was meant to convey.
this was the beginning of us. US. An idle hour spent creating. Creating something with no intrinsic value. Those images didn't make the cave warmer, our fire brighter, our tools sharper, our prey slower. They made us more interested in our world, and more interesting for it. How different our world must have seemed now that we could recreate it when removed from it. Now imagine the teaching of that skill. To give to a child their first charred stick, their first piece of ochre. Seeing another learn to create. To then see the advantages gained with that enhanced vision. That all things are such that you may know them through their representation by virtue of your trained and patient hand. Or that failing your ability, you may know them on the walls of your home, in all its safety, through the efforts of another.
This made us different. Better. Pensive. Keener. Smarter. Artistic. This is the gift of not just drawing, but of all the arts. We could do it, the neanderthals couldn't. And they were quickly left behind. Musical instruments and sculpture were quick to follow. But they were first. Before agriculture, before commerce, before language even. And most importantly, don't ever forget, especially the next time you find yourself at a school board hearing where someone threatens to cancel the marching band, shutter the dark room, unplug the kiln, or fire the theater director; all of the wonder and majesty of our first strokes across the walls of cave took place 39,649 years before the first organized sports were ever played.
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