Reflections on the Oakland Warehouse Fire

American Thinker ^ | December 7, 2016 | Joseph Nicolello

[SteveH]

If by “they” you mean the artists,I could speculate that they would respond by claiming that living in the midwest is boring and would isolate them from each other and from the outer world. imho the real cultural crossroads and artistic center is san francisco, not oakland. people come and go from all over the world to san francisco. it has physical beauty, architectural beauty, and multiple cultures thrive there. oakland basks in the glory of san francisco. these days, artists prefer to live in san francisco, but hi-tech nerds and hipsters have made it expensive in the last 10-20 years, driving rents up and driving artists and hipsters to surrounding cities such as oakland, which then also enter the poshification process. in truth, san francisco would not quite be san francisco without these artists. the point of the artists is not to be the same as everyone else, and not simply to produce what everyone else produces. piccasso, van gogh, and countless other artists were poor during most of their lifetimes. people looked down on them and their art. some contemporary artist have produced interesting art— not matching picasso and van gogh, but still, different enough to be worthy of quiet contemplation. the artists struggle for the key ingredient, inspiration. if they have to stand on their heads and twirl around to get inspiration, to pick an arbitrary hypothetical example, then this is what we will likely see when we observe artists in their natural state, and we won’t understand. for centuries artists have been drawn to great cultural centers to learn, to teach, and to practice their art. as much as we may like the midwest, it probably is not viewed as having cultural centers on par with san francisco, paris, new york, london, tokyo, etc. just saying. the midwest probably is a good place to study the bible as you note (if one is protestant, anyways). however, that is not what these folks were inspired to do. (and g*d still probably loves artists too.)