DB: Arriving on Time

Well I’m sitting here at the Blackwater waiting for an Arts Commissioner. She said she would be here at noon, its noon on the dot. And she just walked in.

The amount of trust that is required to operate in an oral culture is perhaps deceiving. Consider the people you know to be downright liars. I hope that like me, you can think of very few. My television lies all the time, but in my life there are a few people who I do not trust information from, but mostly it is due to their tenancy to misunderstand the information they receive or their simple gullibility.

The Commissioner and I just talked about all sorts of ways that the city government is involved in the arts. Ways that artists trust or mistrust the system, and ways we imagine we can help build that bridge between artists and public art projects in the future. It’s important to me because I know and love a whole collection of artists, and I really would like our city to look pretty and inspire me as I walk through her. For some reason, (duh) artists have a hard time trusting “the man”.

In a relative world, I must understand the people that are speaking to me and filter their story through the story I know of their life and our relationship. This is how I come to perceive the “truth” of the matter being discussed, and inevitably, in collection with other stories, form a loose picture of the “truth” about the city I live in. Thus, the closer I am to the community in which I live, the more realized it will become to me.

My perception of this world, if indeed constructed orally from the stories I am told, is therefore limited by the strength of my relational knowledge. If I have no human contact with “the man”, then I can continue to mistrust what I do not know and remain where I am without fear of change. However, if I sit here and sip my coffee and have an hour long conversation with a government employee about the philosophical aspects of art, I am confronted with her humanity and my ability to trust increases with my knowledge of her and her story.

In the world of urban development, I’m interested in the topics that have human relationships written into the core. I feel that our power is limited by our perception, and our perception is limited by our ability to understand each other’s stories. So much of the information that I receive must be discarded and weeded out. No, beer does not make you skinny and attractive. Suntan lotion will not get me laid, and I do not need fast food to make my day click into perfect order, duh. But will the City accept my grant proposal? Does paying my taxes matter? Does the city of Tacoma care about her artists? The commissioner thinks so, and I’m inclined to believe her….for now.