While we're talking about jobs, let's not forget artists

S.J. Schwaidelson is a Minnesota writer who blogs at The Wifely Person Speaks.

There's been a lot of talk, since the State of the Union address, about the late Steve Jobs telling President Barack Obama, "Those jobs aren't coming back." People are finally catching on to the ideas that 1) we need to have blue-collar jobs housed here in America, and 2) we are going to have to invent an entirely new type of manufacturing to do it.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone except perhaps Congress, which seems to think that job creation is going to materialize out of thin air and that we're going to retrain millions of unemployed workers for those jobs.

Those, however, aren't the jobs I've been thinking about. I'm thinking about three of Bessie Simon's great-grandchildren: my son Misha, who's about to release a new album; his little cousin Emma, who just got a teaching license when she'd rather be singing her lungs out on a stage someplace, and his older cousin, Erik, who, despite a law degree, is making his way as a guitarist in New York City.

And I was thinking about the children of our friends: Ariel, finishing at Boston Conservatory but cutting demos as fast as she can; Jeffrey in L.A., who is working his way through comedy clubs, and Jacob, who's here in town playing in all sorts of bands while running his own studio.

All of them know art doesn't come with health insurance. In fact, neither do a lot of the day jobs. They take gigs as they come. They revel in applause; it's the air in their lungs.

We see Tom Hanks and think all actors are paid well. They are not. We hear Madonna and we think all singers have it made. They do not. And we read Maya Angelou and think all authors get rich from royalties. They — we — do not. Too many journey-people plying their crafts not only don't get rich from their efforts, they live without health insurance. You know the old saw, "Don't quit your day job" — well, most of us couldn't afford to quit our day jobs even if we wanted to. That doesn't mean we're not good at what we do; it just means we're not famous enough ... yet.

In the midst of this, the pathway to artistic expression is being strangled. Cuts in education have curtailed art and music in more schools than not, usually un-employing artists who are trying to keep a day job. In the process, we stop teaching our kids to write, much less write creatively. We lose untold numbers of future musicians because they never get to try that clarinet or violin or sing in a chorus.

If Mozart had been a kid in your average American inner-city school, it's pretty unlikely he would've become the Mozart we know. He would not have had the opportunity to explore music.

Art, music, theater, poetry, creative writing: All these things used to be introduced in grade school. We are raising a generation that has never had a school assembly to watch a theater group perform. These kids have never set foot in a museum because schools can no longer afford field trips.

Young people who have never been in a museum are less likely to visit museums as adults. We will likely see the slow death of many of our cherished cultural institutions because we are not developing audiences to support them.

Kids aren't developing the ability to sit through something that doesn't rise and fall in seven-minute cycles, the time between commercials. Already we see people texting or playing "Angry Birds" while sitting in a theater because they can't concentrate that long on a live performance or a film. The attention span is frighteningly short.

If we lose artists, we lose the soul of American expression. We'll have no communal gathering place, and no shared performance experience. We'll never learn to tell our own stories.

In the quest for more jobs and new technology, we cannot lose sight of another classification of seemingly old-fashioned jobs that still deserve our notice, not to mention our support. We need artists, writers, composers, singers and the rest. There need to be grants to encourage creative endeavors, but at the same time we must continually educate our kids and communities that art is an intrinsic part of our cultural heritage and must be supported by attendance, community membership and active participation.

As we continue the conversation about where to spend our tax dollars, we should not be excising art, music and literature from their places at the table. We need more engineers, we need more scientists, but at the same time we need people who provide entertainment, beauty and relief from the daily grind.

If we lose artists, we lose the soul of American expression. Without it, we are flat and colorless; and once it's gone, we will not be able to PhotoShop it back into the picture.

So let me make this recommendation: Remind your elected representatives that creative expression is necessary to life. Let them know that in the quest for jobs and technology, we still have to protect our cultural environment as well.

And once you've done that... go to the Weisman or Walker to view an exhibition. Go buy tickets to a theater production. Show up on the spur of the moment for last-minute tickets at Orchestra Hall or the Ordway. Give art in Minnesota a fighting chance.

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