WHY THE PIPER MUST BE PAID

Image by Javardh

Somebody must pay the piper who plays the music for the dancer for those who watch and listen, or there will be no music, no dance, no one to hear or to see.  We shall just sit behind our desks and on our sofas, tapping our cell phones, assigning meaning to the mundane, bringing nothing of ourselves, for we shall have nothing to bring.

So, who shall pay if it be not I?  Must I pay the piper for the dance I dance by learning to be a dancer? Must I be dependent upon “the kindness of strangers?” Must I make of the world I was born into a marketplace? Must I make of myself a consumer consumed to maximize profit at your expense? Must I be a commodity or be unemployed? Must I run the unforgiving minute faster than you? Must I be who I am not, and being so, be a stranger, and so being, live as one?

I am not an “attendant lord;” I cannot be “politic, cautious, and meticulous;” I play Fool to no man’s Lear because I cannot. I cannot apologize for crossing stage left instead of stage right, for painting a different view of light upon the water, for singing a song yet unsung, dancing a dance yet undanced. I cannot put aside childish things but must hold them close and play, disguised as actor, writer, dancer, choreographer, director, singer, composer, musician, sculptor, filmmaker, painter, designer.

If I cannot be any of these things, then I must pay Somebody who can so that I may once again experience the joys and sorrows I knew when I was new upon this earth, when I sang all the songs I myself composed, when I acted all the parts of my discovered and undiscovered self, when I played – when I was.

That is the purpose of art: to express human experience unexpressed or denied.  I laugh.  I cry.  I marvel.  I agree. I disagree. I am negated. I am affirmed. I am reflected in images greater than the mirror on my wall who remind me I am human.

That is art’s profit, and that is why the piper must be paid.