Prayer flags and Walking Words

I went to Swarthmore's campus yesterday to catch the last day of the installation of Pato Hebert's work;  I realized in the morning that the exhibit was closing, and was kicking myself for not making it down earlier in the month since I wanted to revisit an Arboretum installation that was scheduled to come down at the beginning of the month.  At the end of Pato's official lecture as the Cooper Artist-in-Residence back in September, members of the audience were given Sharpies and those little flags that usually denote that some herbicide has been recently applied and is now sinking down to the water table.

On the red flags, folks were invited to respond to the prompt "I struggle when...." and on the yellow flags their their responses to the cue "I am at my best when....";  at moments like these, I am reminded of just how much I am asking of students when I do these kinds of in-class assignments since I myself usually like to present pre-polished statements to the world.  As we walked over the library for the reception, we planted our little flags in a triangular bit of groomed lawn in front of the building;  as I was walking up from the van stop, I was happy to see the small field covered with what looked like fluttering prayer flags - many more than we had first planted, which means that passers-by have been inspired to add their own thoughts.

Solipsist that I am, I went looking for my own words but didn't find them;  rather than brood over whether they had been washed away in a recent rainstorm or mowed down by an inattentive spectator, I found myself caught up in the words that others had shared:  "I am at my best when I am with my daughter"; "I struggle with finding an alternative to self-righteousness and self-hatred"; "I am my best every day because I know I am a child of God."  It's amazing to me how the weight of one's own struggles feels so much lighter when one is aware of the burdens others are carrying; being attuned to others' struggles and taking full account of others' joys can have the effect of lightening one's own load.

My physical burdens actually multiplied when I entered McCabe to see Pato's photo exhibit and window installations;  in the middle of the space which was hung with photos capturing images of Pato's breath on a wintry L.A. evening was a booksale conducted by Friends of the Library - trade paperbacks for $2.00, and mass market editions for a buck.  Collections of writings by Howard Thurman and Martin Buber!  A Moon guide to Pennsylvania! Benedetto Croce's Aesthetics! And a new (to me, anyway) work by Eduardo Galeano entitled Walking Words, with woodcuts by José Francisco Borges.  Galeano intersperses his retellings of folk tales and urban legends with aphorisms, tabloid headlines, and random observations: in a short section entitled "Windows on Walls" he shares the following:

In Lima: We don't want to survive.  We want to live.
In Havana: You can dance to anything.
In Rio  de Janeiro: He who is afraid of living is never born.

I think I can, I think I can....

I spent most of the day yesterday in jury duty (though neither I nor the guy with the 7 inch high blue Mohawk was ultimately called to serve) which, in addition to being a good education on the judicial process in this country, was an opportunity to read uninterrupted for hours at a time.  I've been carrying Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark around with me and find that each time I dip back into that collection I draw new insights and visions;  what occupied most of my time, though, was a 114-page study commissioned by the Department of Education back in 2000 entitled Champions of Change: The impact of the arts on learning.

I had this in hand because I was preparing for a Parent-Teacher Organization meeting to which members of the local school board had been invited;  there had been some talk that the district might cut back on "specials" -- that is, art, music, library, and gym -- in order to bolster science instruction...in order to boost PSSA test scores, which now drive curricular planning thanks to what one of the school board members defined as "the nightmare that is No Child Left Behind."  Because of this rumor, and the fact that class sizes have been increasing, folks came to the meeting loaded for bear;  what was disarming was the realization that the school board members were basically on the same page as the parents.  In fact, what became clear was that the school board is struggling with the constrictions on their ability to do what they feel is best for the students, given the PSSA parameters that are becoming an end in and of itself, rather than the assessment tool that would help figure out how to increase support where it is most needed.

A laugh-out-loud moment for me came when the board president noted that the only group that consistently engages the school board members are band parents, who always make an immediate show of force whenever music programs are being threatened.  As my friend Daphne pointed out, "sure, it's because they know how to march in formation, and can still do so if necessary."

In any case, one fascinating moment among many in Champions of Change was from a report co-authored by Shirley Brice Heath and Adelma Roach, writing as linguistic anthropologists;  they note that in observing kids in community-based arts programs "They talk about 'what if?' 'what about...?' 'could we try this?' 'let's try...'....They pepper their sentences with 'could,' 'will,' 'can,' -- asserting possibility.  They preface suggestions with subject-verb phrases that attribute responsibility to their own mental work: 'I wonder,' 'I came up with this crazy idea...' 'I see this going some other way.'

As Heath and Roach go on to write "Such talk can slip past the casual listener as nothing special.  However, in arts organizations, the frequency of 'what if?' questions, modal verbs (such as could) and mental state verbs (such as believe, plan) as well as a complexity of hypothetical proposals amounts to lots of practice....This abundance and intensity of practice for these types of language uses is rarely available to them in any other setting."

So I'm thinking about involvement in the arts as one register where kids learn to articulate what has heretofore been unimaginable, and learn how to work in relation with one another so that when a collaborative effort is needed -- and collaborative efforts are always needed  And if you know that you can in fact execute a perfectly spaced 90 degree turn by the flume ride at Kennywood Park with the entire percussion section while performing Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, organizing to lobby your state and federal legislators on the importance of arts-rich curricula in the public schools seems not so daunting.  And done creatively, it could actually be some fun.