I Choose Delight: The Performing Arts

As I have turned my attention to the wider arts scene—venues, promotion, arts management, demographics—I realize that it’s either a time for despair or delight. I am choosing delight.

Delight comes when we embrace hope. Despair comes when we give up on the values we hold dear. So I choose delight.

Delight comes when we embrace our community in all of its complexity and diversity. Despair comes when we dwell on the adversities of the economy. I choose delight. 

Delight comes when artists share their virtuosity and imagination with unbridled joy. I choose delight.

Delight comes when we remember what it’s like to join with family, friends and neighbors in the shared experience of the performing arts. So I choose delight.

Many years ago, my wife Marian and I were walking through the lobby of Carnegie Hall. There is a small museum there with memorabilia of the legendary stars who have performed there over the decades. But it was during that brief walk that I began to notice music playing from the loudspeakers:

Remember when the music came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire, and as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire, for we believed in things, and so we’d sing.

Remember when the music brought us all together to stand inside the rain and as we’d join our hands, we’d meet in the refrain, For we had dreams to live, we had hopes to give.

And so went the famous Harry Chapin song as we strolled through Carnegie Hall. The song recalled the things we have valued and the things we have believed. It was a delightful surprise.  

Oh all the times I’ve listened, and all the times I’ve heard all the melodies I’m missing, and all the magic words, and all those potent voices, and the choices we had then, how I’d love to find we had that kind of choice again.

The song holds out the possibility that these are values to which we can return. To decline this choice would be despair.

I invite you to join me in the delight of live performing arts. Listening through your headset is not enough. Watching on your flat screen is not enough. Your options for storing and streaming music are virtually limitless. But it’s not the same as bringing a young person to see marionettes for the first time, or watching the violins of Camerata Chicago play in a perfect unison. It’s not the same as watching rock stars of the piano world play with dazzling energy, or celebrating the convergence of folk and classical. Nor is it the same as dinner in a local restaurant with friends before the show, or talking to the artist over a cup of coffee afterward.

I invite you to invest in the delight of the performing arts. Many of your local businesses and corporations are helping set the stage, but we need you to fill the seats. There’s nothing like the experience of the performing arts to shape our community, to educate our young people, and to enrich our own lives. Therein is the ultimate delight.