Every year the day I get the “tes­ti­mo­ni­al” inter­views back from the video­g­ra­phers takes me by sur­prise.  It’s been a few weeks, by then, since the fren­zy of prepa­ra­tions for DMGS³ reached its zenith and quick­ly sub­sided and I crashed into bed with a huge, relieved sigh of “DONE!” and fell deeply asleep with a smile of grat­i­tude on my face.  So to have this reminder of the day arrive in my inbox is a pleas­ant sur­prise in itself.  And to watch what my stu­dents have to say about their work with me is always both hum­bling and grat­i­fy­ing.

And then today, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, after the videos arrived, a Twit­ter screen­shot start­ed mak­ing the rounds of social media today with the fol­low­ing char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly con­cise mes­sage:

2005: Study STEM. The Human­i­ties are worth­less.
2010: Study STEM. The Human­i­ties are worth­less.
2015: Study STEM. The Human­i­ties are worth­less.
2019: OUR DEMOCRACY IS IN CRISIS FOR SOME REASON.

The tweet just under­scored for me a com­mon thread that I saw in my stu­dents’ tes­ti­mo­ni­als, and that I had ear­li­er reflect­ed on as I was prepar­ing the pro­gram book for this year’s event.  Here’s what I said in my intro­duc­tion to that book:

Some peo­ple work every day to make the world a bet­ter place.  Doc­tors and lawyers, nov­el­ists and jour­nal­ists, min­is­ters and folks who run non-prof­it ser­vice agen­cies. They cure dis­ease and feed the hun­gry and pro­mote intel­li­gent dis­course in a world that bad­ly needs it.  The things they accom­plish every week are envi­ably impor­tant.

 

Me?  I teach music.  I tell pianists to curl their fin­gers more and loosen their wrists.  I tell singers to raise their soft palates and engage their abs.  If you get stuck focus­ing on the “what” and the “how” of music-mak­ing, it can seem… unim­por­tant.

 

That’s why today is such an impor­tant day for me.

 

Today is about the “why.”  Today I get to be present as my students—the fin­ger-curlers and wrist-loosen­ers and soft-palate-rais­ers and ab-engagers—bravely put them­selves before a group of strangers, and they make them feel things.

 

How often are pol­i­cy deci­sions made based on cold-facts prof­it-and-loss state­ments?  Heart­less laws written—and com­pas­sion­ate laws blocked—because the peo­ple they impact are safe­ly ensconced in sta­tis­tics, stereo­types, and anonymi­ty?  What would our world look like if our soci­ety val­ued and pri­or­i­tized the uni­ver­sal human­ness of delight­ed laugh­ter and sym­pa­thet­ic tears… of con­tent­ed sighs and com­pas­sion­ate groans… the uni­ver­sal human­ness of feel­ing?

 

The folks who make music for you today may nev­er end up at Carnegie or on Broad­way.  They may spend their days as math­e­mati­cians or chemists, office work­ers or exec­u­tives.  Their careers may not have any­thing to do with music.  But as long as they con­tin­ue to prac­tice and mod­el the courage it takes to feel, and they help oth­ers to do the same, I believe to my core that every day of their lives, they will make the world a bet­ter place.

I am so proud of the feel­ings my stu­dents dis­cov­er dur­ing their work, and evoke in oth­ers.  It’s a tremen­dous hon­or to be present when stu­dents expand their bound­aries of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and sum­mon the courage to reveal their deep-seat­ed human-ness, whether it’s in the safe pri­va­cy of the les­son stu­dio or in the pub­lic space of the stage.  Artists are brave, brave peo­ple, and their brav­ery is the best kind: the artist’s brav­ery is the kind that, rather than threat­en­ing or insist­ing or boast­ing, invites the rest of the world to join in, to take a risk, and to be brave togeth­er.

Hon­est­ly, I think that kind of brav­ery is the only hope our world has right now.

So, what brave art have you made today?