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There’s no way I could come across an article on “slow reading” and not write about it, so for those of you who still care about such things (and I hope, hope, hope that there are many), Lindsay Waters, in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, writes about how current society, particularly teachers of reading, conspires to get us to read more quickly. I guess my use of the word “conspires” tells a bit about my take on this, eh? Here’s a bit (well, maybe more than a bit) of what Waters has to say, albeit a little pedantically :
“In departments of education, professors talk about the “fluency” that those who are learning to read need to achieve to become good readers. Unless one can digest the letters on the page fast enough, one cannot comprehend what one is reading. But once one learns how to read, there is a speed beyond which one stops reading in a truly effective way. I am convinced that most speed-reading is impaired reading, just like the sort you do when you have a fever or are tired or engaged in other tasks at the same time you are supposed to be reading. Unless you are very smart, speed-reading forces you to ignore al but one dimension of a literary work, the simplest information. What we lose is the enjoyment that made people turn to literature in the first place….“I want to ask what reading would look life if we were to reintroduce, forcefully, the matter of time…The mighty imperative is to speed eveything up, but there might be some advantage in slowing things down. People are trying slow eating. Why not slow reading?…
“The role of literature is to mess with time, to establish its own rhythm. A new agenda for literary studies should open up the time of reading, just as it opens up how the writer establishes his or her rhythm. Instead of rushing by works so fast that we don’t even muss up our hair, we should tarry, attend to the sensuousness of reading, allow ourselves to enter the experience of words.”
We English majors (once an English major, always an English major, says Garrison Keillor) were taught to read this way in college. It was called close reading (it is still called that, isn’t it?), and although not equivalent to slow reading, close reading requires that you read slowly, and the end result is much the same: a much richer reading experience. Wine lovers sip each glass slowly to give the wine time to reveal itself, and to give themselves time to savor the full range of its flavors. So with reading. Reading quickly doesn’t lend itself to the pleasures of seeing layers of meaning in a sentence or understanding why the writer chose to use those specific words, or any of the other discoveries and joys of reading good writing. And, then, once you’ve found a book you truly love…well, there’s always rereading.
Other than the current Apple television ads, which are funny and charming, and reinforce Apple’s brand brilliantly, I don’t see much creative advertising on the tube these days. American t.v. advertising doesn’t seem to do “art” well — that is, ads that work effectively from a business and marketing standpoint (since sales are, after all, the goal), AND are artistically interesting or exciting. Europe seems to do this combination better, and here’s a terrific example from VW for the company’s new VW Phaeton. How cool is that?!
Back from Art & Soul, an arts retreat in Hampton, Virginia at which I spent four days painting, collaging, making books, and generally having a good time with art and artists. My favorites were full-day workshops in paint and collage, one each with Ann Baldwin and Traci Bautista (see pix of them in action, along with some inside pages from one of Traci’s journals). Ann’s and Traci’s approaches and styles are very different, but each class was a terrific learning experience. Ann, in particular, is an excellent teacher, and for someone like me, who has very little experience with painting and acrylics, her class was a revelation. Although each student emerged with two “completed” pieces at the end of the day, for me, the class was all about technique and advice and an opportunity to use both. I left the workshop eager to practice Ann’s process at home. I suppose that I’ve known it subsconsciously all along, but I love layers and texture. For me, texture in paint is the visual equivalent of touch, and it’s tremendously satisfying to create it.
As to Traci’s work, while her results (and process) are very spontaneous and playful, in fact she has degrees and solid experience in graphic design and typography (and high-tech marketing to boot). We painted some wild papers — including paper towels — to use for backgrounds and to tear up for collage, and I’ll want to use her techniques again too.
The book I made, in a class with Doris Arndt (see top pix), looks to have metal covers, but in fact, it’s book board covered with (silver) metallic duct tape (who knew there was such a thing?), and splashed with alcohol inks. It was the first time I’d used these, and I liked the effects. The stitch itself wasn’t difficult, but needle and thread have to go through each piece of copper tubing on the spine twice — one on the way up and once on the way down — and that was a little thorny. I’d like to make a second book with this type of spine, substituting some other material for the copper tubing.
In a setting such as this one, the instructors make all the difference, and I was fortunate to have three whose lessons I’ll take to heart and experiment with. Three out of four’s not bad. I’m less focused on the social aspect of these events, which I appreciate is very important to many of the participants (and puts me in the minority), which makes doing advance homework about the instructors all the more important.
Throughout the days, I kept focusing on Ann’s comment that she always does her worst work in workshops and just forged ahead. And I tried — with limited success, but at least I was consciously aware of this when I was doing it — to avoid the “comparison thing.” It wasn’t easy. There was some wonderful work being done, not just in my classes, but everywhere, and it was hard to go straight to my classroom when there was so much enticement on the way there.
So now I’ve gotten the “newbie” thing out of the way, and I expect I’ll go back, if not to this specific event, then to the ones on the west coast, or to the several other retreats that have cropped up in the past five years or so. These programs are, at their core, craft-oriented, and I’m convinced that the main reason for their rise is — isn’t it always these days? — baby boomers. BBs are finding themselves with more time to play: either they’re retired or their kids have gone off (to college or altogether) or both. The amount of money being spent on art supplies, in comparison to, say, 10 years ago, must be astronomical, if the cases being wheeled around the convention center were any indication. And the Internet has made it possible for aspiring crafters and artists in even the most remote locations to get their fix, not to mention that it’s opened up a whole world for those former full-time workers and former full-time moms who want to sell to them from the comfort of their homes.
Got back from Virginia– a 7 1/2-hour not unplesant drive — just in time to head off to the first of my three sessions on the Secret Belgian Binding at BookWorks. News at 11.
Lee Rosenbaum is a cultural journalist (i.e., a journalist who writes about the arts and culture). In addition to her mainstream-media writing, she maintains a blog, CultureGrrl, which I dip into from time to time. Recently, she wrote about what she calls “the coming arts leadership brain drain.” She cites a recently-published report by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Involving Youth in NonProfit Arts Organizations: A Call to Action (67 pages), that reminds nonprofit arts organizations that they need to be aggressive in finding ways to attract and retain new leaders to take the place of the baby boomer arts administrators who are nearing the end of their careers.
Rosenbaum cites a “glaring omission” in the report: that a major reason that smart and ambitious young people don’t look to arts administration as a career is that they can make much more money elsewhere. As someone with experience as both a young and not-so-young arts administrator, she’s right on the money (pun intended). There is a fascinating but dangerous assumption in the nonprofit community (and those who fund it) that money for programming is legitimate and money for administration, including salaries, is less so. And often, Board members and staff are apologetic when speaking about compensation. Why?
Corporate society assumes that good products and programs are the result of smart people who envision, plan, execute and manage them effectively. It recognizes that if its best people are not compensated appropriately they will leave or become disaffected (and thus less effective) or both. Why should these assumptions be different in a nonprofit environment? Sadly, there’s likely something else at work: we value the contributions of nonprofit managers less than those of for-profit workers. Perhaps we think that arts administrators should be motivated by their love for the arts. Of course, many are and should be, but can Board leaders of arts organizations — individuals who often have been asked to serve in part for their business skills — truly believe that this is enough?
I’ve often been puzzled why it is that smart, market-savvy business executives and community leaders who go on nonprofit Boards set aside so many of the tried-and-true principles that serve them so well in the for-profit world. Board members should fight for budgets that pay the arts organization’s best managers fairly, and expect the expertise and accountability that they demand of their own companies’ employees. And arts staff should stop apologizing for the (miniscule) increases they factor into their budgets for administration each year.
Unfortunately, I think that Rosenbaum is right. I don’t think today’s young people will be as accepting of the inevitability of being underpaid to work in nonprofit arts organizations. They simply won’t take these jobs; or they’ll say ‘yes,’ with stars in their eyes, and exit early. The loss will be ours.
