Remember Dickens’s Thomas Gradgrind, with his meaty, square-ended finger pile-driving into his lectern as he tells the kids in his classroom that the world has no room for “fancy”? — that “fact” is all that matters? Well, he is alive and well. There are people walking around who think that imagination and creativity are extraneous human endeavors. Of course, they probably think this because they often witness artistic idiots skipping around and scattering rose petals up to the harsh winds of reality. It is a cultural snake that eats itself, really.

The Gradgrinds think art is unnecessary. Don’t ask me to remember who or when, but I once saw a politician on TV referring to artists who were taking a stand. He said they (mostly actors) weren’t even “real people.” The knowing smile he wore while saying it, ironically, should have won him an Oscar. But did he have a point?

Let’s jump around a little — I’m feeling randomly fanciful today. Flibbertigibbetesque, if you will. Cut: to yours truly directing a high school play. It is less than a week before the production. My second lead comes to me before practice and informs me:

“Uh, Mr. Mat . . . I can’t stay for practice today . . .”

My jaw is now uncomfortably cradled on the tops of my scuffed and only pair of dress shoes. “What?” I say, despite the gross mandibular detachment. (It must have sounded more like “Wuaaahh?” now I think about it.)

“Um, I can’t come to practice today.”

“Whaah nah?” I say, before finally remembering to snap the damned thing back into place. “Why not?”

“I have too much homework.”

No, silly. I didn’t strangle her. Nor did I beat her with a chair. That would have been, while not, strictly speaking, overreacting with a play to put on in six days, bad for my career in education.

Instead, I stood upon the seductively club-like chair and gathered the motley cast about me. I began by telling them that artsy kids deserve the lack of attention they complain about in comparison with the jocks at our school; that while they whine about the attention sports get, I couldn’t possibly imagine a player going to our football coach three days before the state championship (we collect those) and telling him he has “too much homework.”

I daresay, Coach might not have shown the same restraint that I did. And not a court in the country would have convicted him, unless the jury were made up of vengeful stage crew kids.

These little potential artists see art as something that comes out of talent, strictly. They believe that art just happens. If not provided with balanced guidance, they will grow up to not be “real people.” Everything is a dream to them. Worse, they don’t really think the arts are important, though they claim to have veins full of inspiration and a heart driven by thespian passion. They see the arts more as shortcut toward a Romanticized detachment that they can openly and theatrically bear like a personal cross.

Once again, we find extremes to be the problem. On the other side, there are those Gradgrinds who think that education is all about math and science and that the the “real world” is a place meant to be free of “fancy.” They believe that “grown-ups” should keep their feet on the ground and dedicate themselves to paying the bills. They have a one-dimensional view of the jobs they think kids should one day get; the old standbys: doctor, lawyer, etc. Or, the new sensible job: “computers” — whatever the hell that means.

But here’s what all the Gradgrinds and the play kids and the clueless rose petal strewers all forget: Einstein would have been nothing without creativity. By many accounts, he wasn’t very good at math. How did he do what he did? He thought in ways others did not. He thought creatively.

Dr. John H. Gibbon, the inventor of the heart and lung machine that allows heart bypass surgery, is labeled, on his memorial plaque at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, as: “physician, educator, scientist and artist.” It took a creative mind to see a patient die on the operating table and then to conceive of a machine that would oxygenate blood, allowing a surgeon to work on the bloodless heart. It took both “fact” and “fancy” along with years of intensive study and experimentation and — let’s face it — money to create the machine that saves and prolongs countless lives even today.

Doesn’t it always come back to balance? Creativity without discipline is lost; discipline without creativity leads to stillbirth. Someone has to do the math to design the ship; someone has to draw the maps for the captain; someone has to tell the story of the journey, or the whole trip is soon forgotten.

Chris Matarazzo’s ARTISTIC UNKNOWNS appears every Tuesday

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Chris Matarazzo

Chris Matarazzo is a writer, composer, musician and teacher of literature and writing on the college and high school levels. His music can be heard on his recent release, Hats and Rabbits, which is currently available. Chris is also the composer of the score to the off-beat independent film Surrender Dorothy and he performs in the Philadelphia area with the King Richard Band. He's also a relatively prolific novelist, even if no one seems to care yet. His blog, also called Hats and Rabbits, is nice, too, if you get a chance...

Latest posts by Chris Matarazzo (Posts)

• Book Review: An Encyclopedia of Tolkien - October 14, 2019
• The Emperor decrees an end to positive comments about “selfies” - June 16, 2015
• The Emperor decrees that graduation clichés will cease - June 9, 2015
• The Emperor decrees that all official documents will be printed in Comic Sans - March 24, 2015
• The Emperor decrees that the letter “E” shall no longer be spoken as an “A” - February 10, 2015

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