Get out and check out the Fringe Festival over the next few days!

Can I speak in broad generalities for a minute?

I don't think it's a coincidence that so many artists are progressives.

Sure, the fact that so few of them have decent healthcare probably contributes, but I thinks it's more than just the Moore Factor that accounts for progressivism among artists. I think that art, when it's interesting, opens up the observer or listener (if I were feeling materialist, I'd say the arts consumer) to new and different ideas and sensibilities. Interesting art often encourages empathy or sympathy, really does reveal new points of view, sometimes even radicalizes audiences to outrage and action. Sometime it provides release in ways that are impermissable outside of art.

Sometimes it's fun and sometimes it leaves a real mark. But when it's good it makes us feel and think, it expands our palette as it were, and in doing so it moves us--I think--more towards progressivism than conservatism.

At least that's what John Dewey thought when he wrote in his classic book of Art Theory, Art As Experience,

The existence of art...is the concrete proof that man uses the materials and energies of nature with intent to expand his own life...Art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoring consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense, need, impulse, and action characterisitic of the live creature. The intervention of consciousness adds regulation, power of selection, and redisposition. Thus it varies the arts in ways without end. But its intervention also leads in time to the idea of art as a conscious idea--the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of humanity

I always think of that at this time of year because this is when that great Philadelphia institution art and experience, the Live Arts/Fring festival, blows into town. In January, when Ray asked us to "tell (him) something good" about the city, it was the first thing I thought of:

Every year, just when August seems endless, and the humidity hanging over city sidewalks seems like it will never again let laughter or civil conversation back onto our languid city streets, the Fringe/Live Arts Festival blows in like a bewitched breeze from a Shakespeare comedy (or Almodovar's last film) engineered by some psycho Prospero drunk off his ass on Yards.

Suddenly, Old City streets fill with toilet-tricycles, vacant lots sprout dancers and traveling musicians, and shuttered storefronts and empty buildings bustle with dramas and comedies, new, old, and improvised. Long-dormant theaters host world-famous acts. Philly rises from its summer doldrums and reanimates, morphing into an enchanted version of itself.

I know of no more potent aphrodisiac for rekindling a love affair with this city.

I love most the plethora of good dance (I'm biased), but there's always some theatre I want to see, usually some Beckett, and the cabaret (and bar) is always a good time.

I love too how it's all so affordable, so available but short-lived. Because it's so beguiling but ephemeral, it makes you do what you're usually so reluctant to do with your precious entertainment dollars: you take chances! You talk to people in line for a dance or theatrical performance, and no one knows what they're going to see; so audiences talk to each other more, act more like a community. No one waits for the reviews because the shows are usually over before they arrive. No one knows how they're supposed to react, so everyone reacts the way they really feel.

It's so spontaneous and magical, just like the city at its best. Only more so.

I don't always go to have my mind expanded. Tonight it's free vodka drinks at the cabaret (@ Starlight Ballroom, 9th and Callowhill). But even when it's awful, it's usually fun.

Let me know if you see anything good.