Budget ax slashes arts

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Budget ax slashes arts				February 8, 2003

Ever since the Athenians developed the genres of drama by combining poetry and music, these two intimately expressive mediums have served to bare the human soul and to evoke human emotions as no other modes of expression can. While the journey from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Wagner, Philip Glass, the Beatles and Phish might seem to involve a long, contorted path, the fact is that they all share the remarkable ability to meld word and music into a mystical harmony that overcomes reality and moves us into psychic and emotional realms quite outside our normal spheres of operation.

As the Village People so aptly put it, “No one can stop the music.” And they were right. Regardless of the shattering experiences we encounter – be they war, disease or the tragic loss of seven astronauts – music, poetry and the other arts are there to express and reflect our innermost feelings, from high elation to despair and grief.

It is indeed sad, then, when those who have inherited from Apollo the great gift of making music leave the scene, or when those who have the political power to disseminate and enhance our understanding of the arts choose, for whatever reason, to suppress them.

On January 22, William DeFotis, a consummate musician and professor of music at William & Mary, passed away after a long battle with multiple sclerosis. What set DeFotis apart from other musicians was not only his amiability and his intense devotion to his students, but the fact that he was a master of his art. He was, in fact, a conductor.

It is the conductor, whose intimate knowledge of each instrument and what it must do at any given time, allows him, like Plato’s demiurge, to fashion a cohesive whole from the diverse substances he is given to shape. He must be a master of harmony, tempi, volume, chordal arrangements, key changes, and literally thousands of notes. And all of this he must be able to convey to his musicians with the wave of a small stick, known as a baton.

This DeFotis did with optimum artistry. So attuned was he to his music and so at one was he with his orchestra that, when he lost motor control and could no long hold the baton, he conducted a Haydn symphony with facial movements. His orchestra of students responded as though they, their conductor and Haydn were indistinguishable. As far as DeFotis was concerned, nothing, including multiple sclerosis, could stop the music.

Yet there are those who think that the contributions of DeFotis and other artists like him are quite ancillary to the human condition or, perhaps, even dangerous. For instance, when budget cuts are in the works, it seems that the arts, for some uncivilized reason, are the first to feel the axe.

Hence, on the heels of DeFotis’ death came the announcement from Governor Warner that, in addition to the $1.3 million cut in funding for the Virginia Commission for the Arts announced in October, another $1.1 million slash was being contemplated. The effect of these cuts will have an enormous impact on our orchestras and museums, to say nothing of grants to individual artists, who, like DeFotis, were on their way up in their respective fields.

Even more disheartening is the news that the White House has canceled a Feb. 12 symposium titled “Poetry and the American Voice.” According to a spokesman for the bibliophilic Laura Bush, the administration feared an onslaught of antiwar poetry against the serenity of plans for an invasion of Iraq. This, said Bush, would “politicize” a symposium devoted to the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Walt Whitman – none of whom, by the way, is particularly well known for advocating war.

Perhaps worse is the report that the UN decided to cover up Picasso’s antiwar masterpiece, “Guernica,” which hangs near the entrance to the Security Council, when, on Feb. 5, Colin Powell made his pitch for war with Iraq. Obviously the depiction of men, women, children and animals maimed in war did not set the proper mood for Powell’s remarks.

The power of the arts to raise the hackles of warrior politicians is nothing new. It’s been going on since the days of Aristophanes and his opposition to the Athenians’ insistent implication in the deadly Peloponnesian War. That leaders in our supposedly open society should fear, and hence endeavor to stifle, such works, however, is extremely disturbing.

Having known Bill DeFotis, I suspect he would agree that the arts are easy prey for budgetary hawks and political wolves. It is at our own peril and to the great dishonor of musical, literary and graphic artists everywhere that we allow these raptors their conquests.