NickydocDocs

Yeah.  So I reckon I'm pretty clued in.  Well, at least upon the precipice.  I've crossed over the digital divide with altogether minor scrapes and bruises.  I got over the Twitter Tourette's after tweeting garbled predictive texts ad infinitum.  Facebook?  Very last year.  I follow the right blogs, listen to the right people, and ask reasonable questions.  I am never 'tweetier than thou', and I read about 50 posts to every one I send.  Manners.  In the virtual ether, everyone has a say.  It's just about the most level playing field there is--in the ether, we shed our daily trappings and survive and succeed by our wits.  

Success, of course is a relative term.  My definition of success is likely different from others' definitions of success.  That's just fine by me.  In fact, I'm a little comforted by the thought. There are a million different reasons to get out there and stake a claim in the Brave New World.  Mostly, it's just fun.   

To call me a 'supporter' of the arts is probably a bit of an understatement.  I'm a doctor, and love everything about my profession.  Healthcare is tough on both sides of the stethoscope.  But I love it.  The arts?  They give my life meaning in a sometimes meaningless procession of tragic figures, dire predictions, and petty cruelties.  Every time I turn on the news, it's rarely more than a matter of seconds before I hear about some freakish dismemberment or toddler beating.  The arts provide the context for my life.  They infuse my life with spring-warm molasses and smoky languor.  

I believe each culture , in the long procession of the ages, is benchmarked by the arts of the era.  I define cultures (almost viscerally), by the arts they produced:  by their cave drawings; by their egg tempura; by their fertility dances.  I remember hearing black children singing in Soweto.  I was there in 1987, under a fellowship I had won after graduating from Centre College.  Basically, I won this Watson Fellowship and it was a pretty big deal.  So I went to South Africa, Israel, europe...Oxford.  Blah blah blah.  But I was listening to these kids sing.  I had met this Dutch (ie white) Afrikaaner named Juleta.  She was teaching these black kids to read and write.  Now this doesn't particularly mean much, except that back then, the group she was working with, African National Conference was outlawed.  She was teaching black kids to read.  Basically, she was a terrorist.  Of course I was mad about her.  So we were in this old beater of her's, hauling ass back to Rustenburg with these books.  If she'd gotten caught with them,...we'd have been arrested and likely beaten.

Anyway, we're rushing to get out of the city and she takes this side-road.  Long story short, we end up listening to these poor children...like bone crushing poor...sing with the voice of angels.  They sang about their hard and tedious journey.  But it was with this hope...this yearning... And I was sort of hooked on the arts after that.  (That was a little nostalgic regression...forgive)

But I suspect that's why I'm blogging. So yeah, the arts.  In the Brave New World. That's why I'm here.