That kind of “dissatisfied” is a force to change the world before and after.

That kind of “dissatisfied” is created by “education”, called “persuit”.

I wasn’t recommending more spending so that people could be “educated in a useful way” (did you mean that to sound condescending?) More familiar with the best of their culture, yes. Doesn’t it seem likely that if there are more opportunities to experience the best, some otherwise ignorant people will respond. At least it’s true in my case - writers, dancers, music, artists that I wouldn’t have been aware of but for the fact that they had subsidised exposure. Plus subdising the practitioners (by giving them jobs in universities for example) keeps the crafts and traditions alive and moving with the times. I don’t want just a museum culture.

Brendan mentioned earlier that the aristocrats of Europe enjoyed their cultured lives at the expense of peasants who paid for it. Those aristocrats were cultured, weren’t they … surrounded by paintings, books, music, gardens, palaces - I just want to democratise the experience a little.

Rafe, you’re over 50 ? Then here’s a Billy Collins poem you might appreciate:

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Billy Collins

and just to show that I’m not living entirely in the 19th century I will do a Jason Soon and offer you a link to Billy reading the poem on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrEPJh14mcU

There is one way in which too much education is bad for you. That is when you lob into some of the disciplines like sociology, parts of literature (semiology) and subjects that have been radicalised or subjected to deconstructionism. The result of that kind of educational experience is to convert the docile and ambitious into mouthpieces for nonsense and to convince the others that the life of the mind is just a great wank.

If people didn’t want to watch Shakespeare he would be as well known as his fellow playwrights of the same era, who were arguably more popular than him when they were all competing for the same audience. Fortunately for us, people born before us had good taste, and kept the Bard’s works alive. It may be of scholarly interest to discover a lost Shakespearean play, but it is lost because both the artist and his patrons did not find it as important and valuable as his other works.

So playwrights and poets have gone out of fashion, but film directors and songwriters are in fashion. Are you saying that Banjo Patterson tells Australian life at the end of the 19th century more well than a songwriter and performer like Paul Kelly in recent times? Is the work of Peter Weir less culturally valuable than David Williamson? You are making value decisions based on your personal preferences and wanting to impose those decisions on others.

Good art does not need to be subsidised. Your belief that people won’t recognise high art is condescending and paternalistic. You clearly have no faith in the very art you value to convey its own meaning, but rather would rely on experts to dictate to the general public their importance.

The value of experts is not to give them dominion over our cultural lives, but to listen to them, look at the art in question, and make up our own minds.

Introduction To Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

No, don’t acknowkedge it, because that’s not why we revere Shakespeare.

“you advocate experts telling us what is culturally valuable ”

Who would you take advice from if not an expert?

“For every great public building there are many more monstrosities that people live to curse”

An argument for demanding better buildings.

“the works of Patterson and Lawson”

Gawd - they were some time ago Brendan. How many Australians could name one living Australian poet? Whereas if you have poets in public positions you become aware of them - many you won’t like, but some you will. A couple of years ago Billy Collins was poet laureate in the U.S. Here’s a Billy Collins poem:

Embrace

You know the parlor trick.
wrap your arms around your own body
and from the back it looks like
someone is embracing you
her hands grasping your shirt
her fingernails teasing your neck
from the front it is another story
you never looked so alone
your crossed elbows and screwy grin
you could be waiting for a tailor
to fit you with a straight jacket
one that would hold you really tight.