Let's Talk More About Art Saving Your Life

If there’s anything that grates on my nerves it’s constantly having to proselytize that, yes, not only are the arts and humanities useful, but they are simultaneously vital to individuals and a functioning society.

In fact, the arts will save your human life. I know that sounds strange, so let me tell you a story.

For the past two weekends, my daughter has played a lead role in her school’s musical, which this year was Sister Act (don’t get me started on turning movies into musicals, unless someone adapts The Terminator). Finally, my elder daughter had the opportunity she’s dreamed of for years: a giant, soaring solo of a song in Act II called “The Life I Never Lived.” This song feels appropriate because my high school had almost no arts programs, and no theater or drama programming at all—not once in my four years of high school was there a play or musical. So not only would my daughter be living a life I never lived, but I would also be living a life my parents never lived, as they had never seen me perform in, well, anything. This realization hurts me—the lack of access to the arts denied us this unique brand of connection.

Whoopi Goldberg is not my daughter

I’ll skip right to the good stuff—not only did my daughter perform well, she, as the kids these days say, absolutely slayed every night. And each performance, because the song is not until Act II, you could see and hear the entire audience flipping through their programs to answer, “Who is that young lady filling this entire room with her voice right now?” I will use this moment, in the middle of a paragraph, to provide the detail that I indeed cried, hard, at all four performances, often well past the song was over. As you’d expect, on a personal level, it’s amazing to not only see your child or loved one do something magical, but also do something that you yourself could never achieve. (Ask me to sing; I dare you.)

An interesting development followed the first performance and continued throughout the week: my daughter was truly seen by many of her peers and teachers for the first time. One teacher shook her by both shoulders and yelled, “I had no idea!” This is one of art’s many superpowers, allowing people to be seen and heard, especially people who remain under recognized and underrepresented in society’s spectrum of presence.

And while this story is about my daughter—did I mention that she absolutely slayed?—it is also not about my daughter. How? On each night, during her song, a moment arrived that crossed the threshold of personal connection into a form of transcendence. That’s another of art’s superpowers—something that exists outside of yourself suddenly yanks you from of your own identity into a shared space, a sensory experience rendered so meaningfully that you physically react as though every neuron in your brain is firing and every pore in your skin sits open. In this moment, both you and the artwork stand transformed, briefly, like two spheres at the moment of eclipse.

Aristotle called this “Catharsis,” which he described as experiencing something vicariously, like a tragedy, without having to suffer its real consequences. In other words, art could teach you about our world’s emotional landscape before you arrived at any particular terrain. You don’t learn these lessons by taking tests; you learn them by living a life that includes art. You acquire this knowledge by incorporating the arts into your world as fluidly as air or food. The arts are not merely background music for some other, more important event—the arts are vital on their own and don’t need to satisfy secondary outcomes for validity.

Why I am waxing poetic about this? Because the show I just described allowed my daughter to be seen and heard, and it afforded me the experience of both familial pride and artistic transcendence. More importantly, it required many things invisible to the eager audience come showtime, such as infrastructure and well-compensated professionals. While art for many people may be a hobby (which is great), for many others art is a profession.

What hides in the background of everything I have written so far? The auditorium built specifically for such performances and a professional knowledge of sound and lighting; the teachers who directed the show, conducted the entirely student-composed pit orchestra, and who built the sets; true professional knowledge of makeup and costume; the extra four hours after school each day for rehearsal; and the music and drama experience the entire cast experienced in productions prior to this one. Art begets art. There’s more. A lot more. And this often adds up to what might just be the best three minutes of your life, which you’ll never forget because you feel more human and alive than ever. That makes it worth every tax dollar and hour of training and labor. Remember, art always requires hard work and sacrifice—even if that labor remains hidden behind the elegance of performance—and this art will teach you something about what it means to be human in the many moments that comprise what becomes your life.

We need these experiences. Art requires infrastructure. Infrastructure requires training, expertise, and materials. These then require funding and consistent support. Given the community’s attendance at the show, the desire to make that contribution received a standing ovation.