That Lovely Old Biddy From Gabriola: On The Arts

There is a great deal of talk about resources and how important they are for our economy. However I believe there is an even greater resource which can’t be shown in financial tables.

This is the essayist and poet, Naomi Beth Wakan — that lovely old biddy from Gabriola who, with her many years of writing and thinking, reveals a world that has not gone mad, because lovely old biddies are still giving us their views.

The most available worthy resources are people who are intelligent, articulate and compassionate. I know, as they do, we need gas to get to the market to buy food, but we also need water and fresh air. After we have the essentials we need elders who have experienced life.

This is where the old biddies come in.  Even though wise old women have been burnt at the stakes as witches, or shamed for expressing opinions — they are a threat to fascist systems when they value life for life’s sake.

Wakan has written many books in her lifetime and now has a second edition to her collection of essays On The Arts.  It is a full study of arts in our history and today.  The quotes are many from artists of the modern and post-modern era.  

Carl Jung is quoted as saying “It is not Goethe who created Faust, it is Faust that created Goethe."

If you don’t know who Goethe, Faust or Jung are, don’t be put off. As much as Wakan has studied art — she is not an academic elitist. Naomi writes for you and I not the bloviating experts.  Sure there is reference to great minds and teachers, but it is written for all of us who struggle with finding meaning in the marketplace and city.

This book questions the purpose of art not the financial wizardry of auctioneers and world class museums. ART IS FOR US! 

Art is for our mental health, our social systems, political crises and most importantly — our survival. We need creative insight to tackle the problems our planet is facing.

To explain — I go to the chapter on The Art of Personal Essay Writing.  

Wakan writes “I long for the sharp political and personal insights of Nora Ephron and Phillip Lopate’s elegant essays on anything that takes his fancy.” Then follows this with good advice on what makes an essay elegant or just readable.

A fine personal essay is absorbing because it “teaches so much about humankind”. The best personal essays “weave the eternal into everyday moments.”

Personal experiences, feelings, reflections that are simply sharing for no other reason than to meet you and other humans wherever you may sit.

Art includes, of course, music, opera, painting, theatre and even politics, if our system had the imagination to see how it is lacking when the emphasis is solely on the economy and jobs. Many politicians seem to be scared of acknowledging the importance of life on this planet and how we must take care of it.

Naomi doesn’t dwell on the crises we are facing. She writes with humility and reverence within the world, and allows the reader to inform herself on why and how, every day, according to UNHCR, 28,000 refugees flee the countries of their birth to escape persecution.

Hmmm. Between the lack of love for human experience and the emphasis on gadgets and winning or losing, is it possible that the arts are more than just entertainment?

Are lovely old biddies exactly what this planet needs right now?

ON THE ARTS

Essays by Naomi Beth Wakan

(Shanti Arts publishing 2020)

$25.00 cad
mail@pagesresort.com

———

——————―——