Three Cheers for ART
Author Daniel Pink in a recent interview said humans have three “drives.” One is biological, another is by being rewarded for actions and the third, according to Pink is the drive “to direct our own lives, to get better at stuff, to make a contribution.”
This third drive goes beyond needing to mate (first drive) or make money (second drive) and instead gets into doing things that we find meaningful and where the act itself is the reward.
I think this drive is often dismissed as unimportant or it sits below our consciousness most of the time. In other words, we react to this drive even though we don’t name it or are aware we are experiencing it. I think this is why we have a hard time convincing politicians that supporting the arts has so much value.
To me, arts mean…
Being 5 years old where my dad would set me up at his drawing board in his studio and let me draw and paint anything I wanted. We both got a lot more out of my doing this “art” than the actual finished artwork.
Being 10 years old taking cornet lessons from my grandfather. He didn’t “get paid” for my lessons and I wasn’t in it to become a professional musician, but both of us got way more out of it than just the teaching and the learning.
That's me on the right holding the cornet
Being 15 years old singing and acting in high school musicals such as being the grandfather in Guys and Dolls.
Being 20 years old and going out with a camera to Capilano Canyon with my friends Paul and Bruce taking photographs for hours, not because anyone else would ever see them but because it felt right “inside” taking them and because I learned to see differently.
Being 25 years old enrolled in the commercial music program at Capilano College doing ear training and studying music theory which opened my ears to other dimensions of music.
Being 30 years old and discovering the music of Gustav Mahler and getting goose bumps listening to “Das Lied von der Erde” while sitting on a beach on Hornby Island in August watching the shooting stars.
Being 35 years old and coming to terms with life and death by singing a song I’d written about losing my friend (Bruce) in a plane crash.
Being 40 years old and discovering the joy of typography and its history. A new world opened up.
Being 45 years old and hearing Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony in San Francisco which made my hair stand on end and was the most moving concert I’d ever been to.
Being 50 years old… well, who knows what I have to look forward to with this silly thing we call “Art.”
It’s my experiences with art that I remember.
It’s art that makes life magical and brings us together in ways we can’t even conceive of.
Today, the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics happen in Vancouver and guess what we will see? ART, ART, ART, presented by people, young and old, who were given the opportunity to live in a society that let them have time to explore the “third drive.”
