Luciana Lopez, the Pop Music Critc for The Oregonian, recently shared a very transparent and thought-provoking post on her Oregonlive page. What strikes me about her post is the honesty she offers and how much her feelings resonate with me too, and I imagine, equally resonate for many other artists, writers and insiders in the music community, as we wake-up daily and carry on our lives in the midst of an undeniable world crisis. Here’s what she has to say.

Music and art in a time of anxiety
by Luciana Lopez, The Oregonian, October 10, 2008

This has been much on my mind lately, and particularly today, in a time of sadness and anxiety: The place of music in my life and in our lives now. I am still very much thinking this through; this is only my thinking right now, at the moment that I write. Those thoughts will almost certainly change, maybe even by the time I get to the end of this post.

Right now it’s Friday at 2:37 p.m. I have two stories to file today: My five live picks and a slightly longer preview for the 10/17 A&E. It’s a difficult day. The news about the economy remains confusing and frightening, which only engenders more fear and confusion; and the news about journalism, which has been imperiled in the United States for a long time, is even scarier. We are journalists because we believe in journalism, but I think many of us are suddenly unsure what that term — journalism — can or should or will mean today, a year from now, five years from now.

But I still have to file these stories…

I’m the pop music critic, which certainly at least suggests a close relationship with music. I’ve turned to music before for consolation, for happiness, for distraction, for a lot of things. Now, though, I’m struggling with the importance of something like a five live list of picks in the face of all this sad news, and I’m wondering what is the place of music and art as we struggle through difficult times. I have a deep belief in the power of art. I’ve cried at books, movies, paintings, albums, plays. I have been arrested in mid-thought by a moment of vision so piercing I couldn’t even breathe. I’ve returned, over and over, to different kinds of art that have revealed themselves to me layer by layer, unfurling like the first gold of the natural world. I believe in art. I couldn’t do this job if I didn’t.

What is important now? What is the thing to which we should be giving ourselves now?

I have a certain pragmatic turn. I have some admiration for people who can give up everything for a specific cause, who give up any kind of financial security, who throw themselves and their lives into the fire in the belief that their devotion protects them from the flames. But I’m not like that myself. So my pragmatic mind wonders now what art and music are in my life.

Consumers are cutting back their spending. It’s not worth linking to an article on this because if you don’t know this from the relentless headlines or your own experience then you don’t need to be told. Art will get caught in this crossfire. $200 for a Police concert, or that endless supply of DVDs at Netflix — or, better yet, the public library? Buying CDs or downloading music, much of it legal, online? Going to live shows or maybe a night in with a book in front of the fire? Or, god, concert tickets or the grocery store? Rent? Back to school supplies for the kids? We are retrenching. We are re-evaluating. We are afraid of slipping down a slope that leaves us, penurious and old, powerless in a society that often equates material wealth with personal success.

I know what I am supposed to say: Art will sustain us in these times. We need art more than ever. Now is the time, above all others, when the promise of intellectual and aesthetic transcendence means the most to a beleaguered nation.

Part of me really does believe that. If I didn’t, fragments of songs and books wouldn’t be floating through my mind now. Some books: Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” and “The Man in the High Castle,” Matt Ruff’s “Sewer, Gas & Electric,” Edward P. Jones’ “The Known World,” Cordwainer Smith’s short stories in his Instrumentality of Mankind universe, Saramago’s “Blindness” and “The Cave” and “All the Names,” anything I have ever read by Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Music: Tomas Stanko, Jobim’s “Felicidade,” Joan as Police Woman, Bjork. Music and books and art I return to constantly, for solace and for more.

But part of me now is not sure what the comfort of art is at a time when the daily questions of survival have assumed such importance. The necessity v. the luxury of art. This is on my mind as I need to write these two stories and am instead writing this blog post. I don’t know quite how to resolve this tension in me. I suppose this is a long question in human history, and maybe even in natural history. Survival of the body, survival of the soul. I’m not sure what portion of myself to give to which.

I would like to hear what you think about this. I am struggling, and I think perhaps others are, too.

- Luciana Lopez; lucianalopez@news.oregonian.com

Luciana Lopez has been an Oregonian staff writer since 2003; she’s covered suburban schools and suburban city governments for the newspaper. She’s also written about music for Juice magazine, Urb and XLR8R.

She was born in New Jersey (please don’t hold that against her) and has lived in Brazil and Japan. She completed her undergraduate education at the University of Virginia and got her M.A. in journalism at the University of Maryland. She’s thinking of getting a cat, but the responsibility is a little intimidating.

You can read Luciana’s regular column, reviews and more in The Oregonian and on Oregonlive at: http://blog.oregonlive.com/popmusic/

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