Apt author mumbles art on cable

I wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy because we’re experienced with it-Indemocracy… I wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy because we’re experienced with it-Indemocracy after 100 years you have to let your slaves go. And after 150 years you have to let your women vote. At the beginning there’s quite a bit of genocide, and ethnic cleansing is quite OK.”

I don’t watch “The Daily Show” nearly as often as I should. In my defense, I’m usually at work when it’s on. Last week I caught part of a morning rerun, and the first thing I saw after changing the channel to Comedy Central was Kurt Vonnegut. Jon Stewart treated him with a level of awe such that anyone watching, regardless of whether or not she had read his books, would soon have agreed was appropriate.

Vonnegut spoke with that elegantly slurred, mumbling speech Hollywood’s taught us to associate with genius. Out of a string of syllables and looks that at first appeared a bit burdened by 80 years of life came comfortably sarcastic banter with Stewart, followed by a few words ripe with insight fitted together precisely and delivered in a casual, conversational style.

A man who had seen the fire bombing of Dresden spoke out about the idiocy and hypocrisy of the United States’ assault on and attempted instantaneous reform of Iraq, and he did it on Comedy Central. I hadn’t expected to ever see anything so intelligent and unaffected on television.

It took me awhile to figure out why I was so excited when I saw this interview. It’s not that I expected America to rise up and say “My God. Kurt Vonnegut is right. Change and growth take time. We need to support these people in developing their culture and political system, not force ours on them.”

After a few hours, I realized that I had just seen an example of how to do what I’d long since decided was impossible. Through humor, Vonnegut had straddled the great divide between consumable entertainment and shrouded brilliance.

When I was a sophomore in high school and unsurprisingly malcontent, I read something J.S. Mills wrote. It gave me words to articulate my feelings that had been imprisoned behind a banner of patriotism: I felt like I was living my life in the talons of a bald eagle.

As I started to grow up, I realized that reading could do more than clarify my resentment. From it I learned the vital importance of the existence of a smooth and efficient mechanism for the opinions of minority thinkers to reach everyone. So when the actions of the majority in power prove less than desirable, the few will become many and a new group of people will deal with the problems facing everyone.

I knew that any such mechanism was being drowned out by the ever-present noise of those with money peddling back to the masses their own materialistic fetishes disguised as entertainment, which we occasionally dare to call art.

Yes, we need an honest source of news to inform us of world events, and it is these events that our political process exists to handle. But, it’s not through facts that people change, and it is the ability to change that we need to survive and to control that political process. Information does not protect liberty. Freedom hinges on art and the people’s willingness to live it

Art: True art pushes the threshold of what each person is capable of feeling and thinking. It can preserve that part of us which is so constantly battered by the mundane and the seemingly necessary.

Not only is it difficult to locate artists producing work of that quality right now, but it’s hard to be able to connect to it after a 40-hour workweek on top of a 12-credit schedule. It is far easier to be comforted by that which is primarily entertaining without concern for its value.

I’ve spent years certain that intellectual, potent art was completely irreconcilable with that which can easily be accessed. When I saw Vonnegut on “The Daily Show,” I got the idea that it may be possible to expect the average person to make the transition from the comfortable to the important and still not demolish the barrier between the two – and in so doing devalue both.

Genius may be scarce, and it may be required to awaken in the majority those pent-up thoughts and unique emotions that now make only brief appearances under full moons or when the first few leaves fall in autumn.

Even lacking the genius of a Vonnegut, surely several less gifted but truly dedicated people working together can produce a bridge between what is comfortable and where we’re vulnerable to change.

E-mail Zak Sharif at rzs8@pitt.edu your ideas for how to get real art to everyone.