This is one of the best talks I've ever seen about the importance of the arts. Ever.
In it, Ben Cameron talks about the performing arts - but I think this applies to the arts in general, performing or not.
Because, a print of a painting does not offer the same experience as standing in the same space in front of a masterpiece that the artist occupied when he or she first stretched out a brush to make the first mark on the canvas.
Art is a living thing, people are living things, pixels and text and pictures and videos are reproductions.
Someone really smart once said to me (okay it was my husband), that when you play a brass instrument, you breathe life into it for a while, and then it sits and goes cold again. You have to bring it to life. And an amazing life it can be, but you have to put it there. This is what online life is like. You breathe life into it, but in the end it is not a living thing. It goes cold until you come back.
And I heartily agree with Mr. Cameron that there is going to be a huge premium on experiences that connect people in coming years. Facebook isn't going to cut it. Oh, it will initiate a lot of things, and it will reinforce "dirt world" relationships, but people who are good at looking you in the eye, hearing you, and having a conversation with you that is NOT recorded, does NOT get archived, can NEVER be reproduced because you can't ever go back to that day, that weather, that time, those people, that mood, that topic, ..... people who are good at this, are going to own the place.
I absolutely love being able to keep connected to people and to do business and have conversations all over the world all the time. Love it.
But next time you see a live performance coming up that you want to see, go. That performance will never be replicated again. Those people, on that day, under those circumstances, that performance, and the unique energy between that audience and those performers - will never happen again. Go.
