People gather in front of the stage awaiting the Imagine Dragons concert on July 7, 2023, at the Quebec Summer Festival in Quebec City.Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press
It took some effort: hard pants, a SkyTrain ride, a long lineup – not to mention the acquisition of a ticket. These travails allowed me to take in a Vancouver International Film Festival screening of The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal last weekend. And they took me far beyond. Art, done well, can send you into someone else’s life, into your own past, into possibilities.
The four-part series traces the Kingston, Ont., band’s rise to fame, followed by its one-of-a-kind front man and lyricist Gord Downie’s terminal cancer diagnosis, the Hip’s farewell tour in 2016 and Mr. Downie’s death the following year.
Many of us at the sold-out screening could have watched at home: the docuseries is screening on Prime. It wouldn’t have cost a cent and we could have stayed in our sweats. But we would have been robbed of the experience of watching with a bunch of other fans, communing.
I detected a murmur through the crowd when Canadian media personality George Stroumboulopoulos said, about Mr. Downie’s songwriting: “Gord was secretly telling you ‘read books, look at art.’ ”
Yes.
During the pandemic, the absence of live art created a deep craving – for sweaty concerts, highbrow theatre, opera, dance. A wander through a gallery, laughing with others during a stand-up comic’s set, a film in an actual cinema, with the good popcorn. A poetry reading! The Zoom presentations were welcome innovations, but obviously inferior to culture IRL.
Yet, Taylor Swift juggernaut aside, the arts remain in a post-pandemic struggle. As my colleague Josh O’Kane has reported, “organizations emerged from lockdowns to surging costs, dwindling audiences, hesitant philanthropists, distracted corporate sponsors and mostly stagnant government funding.”
My inbox is cluttered with existential pleas from arts organizations. In one recent e-mail, Vancouver Coastal Jazz warned the future of its free programming could be at risk, urging supporters to make funding a B.C. election issue. “The arts are more than entertainment,” the e-mail stated. “They provide critical services by combatting social isolation, fostering creativity, and promoting positive mental health and well-being.”
Yes.
The news has been so awful. The past year has been excruciating, in particular for many of us with ties to the Middle East. We are now coming up on the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks. War is waging in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, Sudan. I could go on.
Hibernating has sometimes felt like the best option. Who feels like partying to live music right now? For me, as accounts emerged of antisemitism at concerts and comedy shows, and protests at film screenings and literary galas, the inertia has been strong. The lure of disappearing into a darkened theatre for a couple of hours – a huge privilege, I know – has been superseded by the safety of my couch. A bigger privilege, I know: safety.
But lately, I have been venturing out a bit more. I attended a dynamic production of Hamlet at Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach on a sunny Sunday. I witnessed a stunning performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, followed by an amazing presentation by the Dutch-based Symphonic Cinema, which creates films based on classical music – in this case, Stravinsky’s The Firebird. The director edits the film digitally onstage, as the orchestra plays.
All of this has been good for the soul; and a needed distraction.
Art is also an educator.
Ahead of Nathan Thrall’s appearance at the Vancouver Writers Fest, I’ve been reading his Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama. It offers an illuminating window into the Israeli-Palestinian situation that you won’t get from even blanket news coverage.
The arts sector has a role to play in this nightmare, and organizations like VWF are brave and correct to take it on creatively. In the past, the festival has kicked off with the Giller Prize Between the Pages event, featuring the award’s shortlisted authors. The Giller – which has been targeted by anti-Israel protests because of its sponsorship by Scotiabank, which invests in an Israeli weapons manufacturer – says it is working on an international tour instead.
This year, the Vancouver festival will instead open with an event called Finding Joy Amid Turmoil. Invited authors will demonstrate how art can help unearth beauty, even amid ugly events. (The initial plan was to launch the festival with a tribute to Alice Munro, which was scrapped after disturbing details of her late husband’s sexual assault of her daughter came to light. More awfulness.)
Buying a ticket to a cultural event might not seem like much, but it is a critical form of support – and, more importantly, can lead to a transformative experience. Read books, look at art, go to a show. Observe – and participate – as artists try to make the world a better place, or at least make sense of it.