As a lover of theater, I am always psyched to see any kind of performance-whether it be a straightforward play, musical, or concert. However, I can hardly count the encounter with Jonathan Safran Foer on the last day of orientation a performance of any sort; I believe that the title of Arts Day for August Twenty Fourth was a bit of a misrepresentation for what actually went on.
First, let me explain what I mean by Art. The technical definition as provided by Oxford Dictionaries is the works produced by human creativity and skill, but I don’t completely agree with this stuffy definition. I believe that it misses the entire point of what art really is. To me, art is anything with the capacity to inspire passion deep within a person, to move them in a way that they never knew they could be moved. Art can come in so many forms, a good novel, a sculpture, a chord progression, or even a well designed article of clothing. It doesn’t matter what it is, all that matters is that it makes a person feel something they didn’t before, it stirs up emotions inside them that previously had sat idle.
So yes, the written word is as much an art form as a portrait or melodic tune, that being said Jonathan Safran Foer is indeed an artist. His books are his own masterpieces, so I naturally assumed that Mr. Foer would share his ideas, his inspirations, his writing process and other tricks of his trade. I was actually looking forward to what he had to say because I always dreamed of one day publishing a novel of my own, it has been a dream of mine since I was little. So one would understand why I was a bit disappointed when Mr. Foer shared very little insights and instead opted to give his own rather cynical remarks on the changing society of New York City and the world. As a matter of fact, it seems that Mr. Foer, despite being an artist himself, had any reverence for the arts or even considered himself an artist. His entire viewpoint on his own writing was shallow and almost disconcerting. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the hour and a half or so spent in the presence of Mr. Foer, but I didn’t enjoy it for any artistic purposes whatsoever. I drew most of my entertainment from the man’s off the cuff remarks and sarcastic comments. He certainly was an interesting man to hold a conversation with, but his conversation hardly roused any emotion within me. As far as the “performance” aspect is concerned, I hardly believe that Mr. Foer’s rather dry reading of his own work counts as a performance on any level. Perhaps if he had actually made an attempt to perform the reading instead of simply reading the words printed on the page, a piece of art could have been created right on that stage. Unfortunately, his reading just didn’t make the cut for me.
In my humble opinion, if the school was going to be so bold as to entitle a day of orientation “Arts Day”, they should have devoted at least some time to the Arts. Being located in Manhattan, there was a million and one things that could have been done to fulfill this title – the number of art gallery’s in Manhattan is almost staggering. Or perhaps a real performance could have been given right in Hunter College’s Auditorium, one that invoked a sense of awe in the audience and captured their attention with a little more force that Mr. Foer’s reading. All in all, the day was an enjoyable experience and a good end to our three day orientation,but it was- by no stretch of the imagination- an exhibition of the arts.
