I have seen lots of people commenting on how the pandemic revealed that America’s “essential workers” were not necessarily the same people we would deem “successful.” Some were — certainly, we’ve had no problem deeming doctors successful, for instance. But many of those who kept working were grocers and mailmen and food delivery drivers…
At 7pm every night, New Yorkers have leaned out of our windows and clapped and hollered and cheered and banged pots and pans or played music in a glorious ruckus to thank these essential workers for keeping things going when everything else had to be shut down.
When school moved online and teachers had to abruptly figure out an entirely different teaching method and schedule, parents faced with non-stop care of their children raved online: “Teachers are AMAZING and I don’t know how they do it!!”
Yet as the pandemic has stretched on, there has been no push for better pay for these people or even for safety measures to be taken on their behalf. Teachers are being lined up to be sacrificed in a matter of weeks; several of those essential workers are confronted with people who expect service and don’t want to wear masks.
An aspect of this that I’ve seen playing out in particular (but talked about very little) is the way that the arts have proven both “essential” and yet utterly devalued by people.
When the Met Opera was streaming online, my News Feed blew up. When museums put their collections online, or a streaming service added new films, new music, new television shows, people were thrilled. People turned to creative hobbies; they redecorated their homes, purchasing and hanging new artworks. And then, of course, there was Hamilton!
The arts were clearly an important form of coping and healing. They were essential to our daily facing the trauma unfolding around us.
But still, people bristle when it comes to paying anything for them.
I would like to think that there is a pseudo-positive reality behind this. These things we deem essential feel so essential that it seems almost as if we’re entitled to them. Of course they should be free, or at least highly accessible: we need food! We need childcare! And in the same way, we know deep down that we need beauty and art! We feel like these are so basic to the human condition that we could do them ourselves, to some extent.
And that’s a beautiful thought: that the arts are as basic of a human need and there exists creative potential in everyone. But it has been warped into taking expertise and the sacrifice around these services for granted.
My artist friends’ jobs have been put almost indefinitely on hold. Still, for the joy and therapy of creating, they have worked hard through this quarantine to write songs and plays and get them to you for free. This has been done in the name of some kind of public service, aware that the arts can make things better; artists, being spiritual, have not only a compulsion to create, but a calling. There is a real awareness that their art can bring light to others, and artists have been eager to do so however they can as our country faces darkness.
But Broadway has been closed. Auditions have halted. And any conversation or legislature around paying artists has been largely laughed off; “They should have done something else,” I hear frequently.
The thing is, most of my artist friends DO do something else. Most of them work multiple jobs and find ways to create and perform for free on their own time. They have adopted a sacrifice as part of the work, much the way that teachers do, because they believe the work itself is meaningful. And now, those same jobs — restaurant work, cafes, work-out instruction— have largely vanished as well, and they are facing a stretch of indefinite unemployment.
I would encourage everyone to consider how uniquely difficult this time has been for artists and how “essential” the arts have been in your life. Have you been watching Netflix? You can thank artists and writers and actors for every aspect of the shows you’ve liked. Have you been listening to music? “Visiting” museums? How much art have you consumed? How valuable has it been to you, really?
How have you shown this value to the artists around you?
Figure out a way to support and advocate for creatives; they are doing the bulk of the soul care in this pandemic and so far, it has been an intensely thankless job.
