I was having a conversation with a friend from a previous job that brought up a few questions for me about what motivates people who work in the arts to attend arts events.

This gentleman was assistant marketing director and then marketing director for a theater at which I once worked. He eventually left to work for another marketing company, formed his own company which was acquired by another and is now a partner in that combined company.

In the same period his wife has been phasing herself out of a career in which her services were in high demand and is trying to earn her Actors’ Equity card. A couple years ago they both traveled to Scotland, young children in tow, to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe.

My friend tells me he hasn’t gone to see a show at the place we worked or almost anywhere else in years because of the ticket plus babysitter costs. This is a barrier to attendance that is commonly cited so there was no surprise in that.

What I was thinking as he told me was that if a guy who was paid to convince others that there was value for them in surmounting this barrier is unwilling to attend, how much harder is it these days to appeal to those without any background in arts attendance at all.

Granted, there is the element of his daughters’ youth that has to be factored in as well. Arts person or not, there is a necessity of child rearing that must be heeded. He gave the impression that he might be attending events more often now that his girls were getting older. It will be interesting to revisit the topic in a couple years to see if he did indeed start paying to attend shows more often.

I make the specific qualifier about paying to attend because he has been attending the shows his wife performs in using the comp tickets she gets. This fact spawned another train of thought that does not reflect on my friend’s practice, but is something I have observed in general.

I have known about 20 people in the last 15 years who haven’t been able to make the philosophical transition from starving artist to paying member of public. They got used to paying $5 or getting comps when they were students and/or starting out and years after won’t attend a show unless they receive the same treatment. In some cases they appeal to some pretty tenuous connections with people they only talk to when they want tickets. At least once a year I get a call invoking the name of someone 10 years gone.

I am betting some of my readers know these people. I am also willing to wager that some of them are pretty well off and put their ramen eating days behind them or worse, are successful professionals in the industry and feel their importance earns them free admission. (I have to confess, much to my chagrin every year I am sent two season passes to a theatre based on my theoretical importance. I am typically too busy and embarrassed by the idea to attend more than once or twice a year.)

I don’t know that this type of behavior is necessarily solely endemic to the arts rather than just being a component of a personality type. I am sure there are people who expect free food when they return to a restaurant where they once worked. Personally, I would prefer the problem to be personality related than to think that a lot of arts people are parasitic jerks.

The problem with this answer is that it provides more evidence that us arts people just like everyone else. If a guy who has performed and worked in theatres for over a decade leaves the performing arts world and has as hard a time motivating himself past to attend as the couple next door, maybe the arts aren’t a calling for a special segment of the population.

Frankly, I hate to have this sort of pessimism creep into my world view. The idea that being part of the arts confers a special grace and nobility makes being flat broke a little more tolerable. (It also dovetails nicely with a Catholic upbringing replete with tales of suffering saints.) And even though I am in administration, I feel the phrase “run arts like a business” robs it of some value.

I have come to realize that this grace and nobility isn’t the sole providence of those working in the industry but rather can be shared among all those encountering it. (Which is not to say that a dirt poor existence doesn’t sharpen the senses and appreciation of those who are receptive to experiencing art!) Partaking of this grace and nobility as a suffering poverty stricken artist in your youth certainly hasn’t earned you comps for life. You can’t be part of the in-crowd forever. One day you have to join the great unwashed and pay for your tickets.

Via Americans for the Arts ArtsBlog is a three part discussion about Joshua Bell’s experience playing anonymously at a Washington, DC train station back in April.

The three parts were actually recorded on the same day but have been posted periodically on the Polysemy Woodshed podcast/blog page. (Links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Their discussions were some of the most thoughtful on the event that I have come across. The participants tackled a lot of the same issues about respect and recognition of talent, appropriateness of venue and curiosity of the children that I and others who have blogged on this topic have.

Among the specific ideas I found intriguing was the concept of an agreement existing between the performer and listener. Another was comments in part two by one of the participants where she talks about how discouraging it was that people walking by Bell seemed determined to ignore him. A short time later she acknowledges the common practice of tuning out information that is not immediately pertinent when she admits that she has only just noticed there were a lot of birds singing in her backyard and she has no idea if they have recently taken up residence there or if she has been tuning them out for a long time now.

The idea that you have have to have a frame of reference of some sort to assist your evaluation of art also came up in relation to art appearing in familiar and unfamiliar situations as well as simply having had enough prior experience that you can make a deliberate choice between stopping or walking away.

Part of the allure of Joshua Bell, one commenter argues is that there are a series of actions one engages in prior to attending a performance that create a sense of excitement and anticipation. Having circumvented these preparatory stages by appearing unannounced in a train station, Bell divested himself of much of the framework that make his performances so valued. He became merely a good violin player in the subway.

For those of you who recoil at the idea that Joshua Bell has much less value unannounced outside the symphony hall as he does inside let me point out that the U.S. dollar has no value outside what we invest in it. It is not backed by gold or silver–just belief. Print the exact design of a dollar bill on the exact same paper using only black ink and it is worth only the paper it is printed on. Add the blues, greens, yellows and reds and suddenly it is worth a bit more. It isn’t perfect analogy but in the same manner do tickets, clothes, dinner arrangements and nice performance halls contribute additional value to Joshua Bell.

As those discussing the situation point out, all these ancillary elements that enhance the value of the experience in our minds don’t actually improve the art. They are just things we as attendees have convinced ourselves are important to improving our receptiveness and enjoyment of the event.

One of the people talks about Matt Haimovitz who looked be one of the next great concert cellists but gave it all up because he felt he was disconnected from the audience and instead started playing in rock clubs, ice cream parlors and malls.

As the third segment ended, they pondered whether it was worth having orchestra musicians busk from time to time in the hopes that some ideas about how things might be changed to reach the man on the street would emerge.

I am not quite sure if there will be another installment or not. Each episode didn’t really indicate either overtly or imply by incomplete discussion arc that there would be additional sections posted. Since each segment was posted in two week intervals, I may just have to wait a couple weeks to find out!