Saturday, September 20, 2008

An Election Issue

Received from Val Hearder: A letter to Stephen Harper by a Governor General Award winning playwright about the cuts to arts funding. Here is just a part of that letter, but please go to The Wrecking Ball to read all of it.

Dear Mr. Harper. ...
A grain of sand is all-powerful

I believe, my dear colleague, that you yourself have just planted the grain of sand that could derail the entire machine of your electoral campaign. Culture is, in fact, nothing but a grain of sand, but therein lays its power, in its silent front. It operates in the dark. That is its legitimate strength.

It is full of people who are incomprehensible but very adept with words. They have voices. They know how to write, to paint, to dance, to sculpt, to sing, and they won't let up on you. Democratically speaking, they seek to annihilate your policies. They will not give up. How could they?

The resistance that will begin today, and to which my letter is added, is but a first manifestation of a movement that you yourself have set in motion: an incalculable number of texts, speeches, acts, assemblies, marches, will now be making themselves heard. They will not be exhausted. Wajdi Mouawad

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