I love words – their origins, their evolution, their power – and have occasionally deployed a few of them on their own behalf in this very space. One theme to which I recur from time to time, and that speaks to me with some urgency as fall turns to winter every year, is the notion of how we humans create communities to keep the cold and the darkness at bay. Allow me to focus on that for a few moments, starting with that word focus.
In Latin, focus stands for the hearth, that center of domestic life where the fire burns, the meat roasts, the soup boils, the socks dry, and the warmth draws us closer as the night cold asserts its grip. Sometime during the 17th century (perhaps urged along by discoveries in optics, physics, and mathematics) the sense of convergence, intersection, concentration of energy began to emerge, rooted in that earlier, more tactile memory of huddling close to the fire for comfort, sustenance, and protection. And of course we can focus a lens to start a fire… or a conversation.
I like to think that the arts are a focal point for civil society in both the ancient and the modern senses. A stage filled with dancers, actors, or musicians (why not all three?) is a brightly lit hearth around which families – real and accidental – cluster to receive warmth and create community, keeping the darkness at our backs for a shared couple of hours. And it is a place that concentrates our minds, sharpens our perceptions, and connects us with one another in ways that no other shared experience really does.
As the dusk comes more quickly every day now, I look to our warmly lit spaces to beckon us towards a temporary truce with darkness. Winter is coming. Focus on the community-creating power of the arts to see it through.
Rick Davis
Dean and Executive Director