Lately the word “community” gets tossed around almost as promiscuously as “green” and “sustainable.” (Featured at your next non-profit benefit party, along with the rubber chicken served under a plastic tent: community-supported green sustainable Port-a-Potties!) But do such terms still mean anything? Or have we neutered these otherwise useful terms through careless repetition?
A few weeks ago I dropped by a community event, the local library’s annual shedding of books which no one reads anymore.* Standing by the raffle table, an exceptionally gentle and community-minded friend said out of the blue:
I’m starting to get fed up with all these local events and shows and places which are supposed to be so great... But when I go it turns out to be totally mediocre at best. Still we’re all expected to be enthusiastic and supportive anyway, because, you know, these are ‘community’ things. If you don't jump on the bandwagon, you’re some kind of monster.
You could have knocked me over with a paperback copy of Small Is Beautiful, considering the easygoing source of this stark sentiment—and also because he’d bluntly articulated a thought people often have but usually keep to themselves.**
Being “pro-community” shouldn’t have to mean losing one’s critical faculties. Just because a product is local, or a tavern is part of the “fabric of the community,” or a Hollywood screenwriter lives in your town, or your neighbor has a gardening business, doesn’t guarantee that they’re all absolutely fabulous. Though our Panglossian impulse is to imagine that we live in the best of all possible communities, it’s a lot of work to maintain that illusion.
Sustaining such untempered enthusiasm requires one to indulge in an odd mix of denial and typecasting. For example, we profess to love all local agriculture. But like most people, farmers are human, too. Up close, not every farmer is a lovable, salt-of-the-earth guy; and not all of them produce great produce. Treating every single local farmer as some sort of homespun saint does no credit to those who really are competent and inspired tillers of the soil.
Likewise, we celebrate our firehouses unconditionally—and so we shrug when the occasional firefighter turns out to be an arsonist. We want our local restaurants to thrive, and so keep mum even if some serve worse grub than Fuddruckers. We want to feel cultured and un-provincial, so we avidly attend our friends’ theater and art shows, even if they often prove humdrum.*** And we are thrilled that buying Little Billy that karaoke machine back in 6th grade led to him forming a band in college... But honestly, a lot of regional musicians ought to stick to singing in a soundproofed shower.
Amid this sea of mediocrity, a lot of great stuff gets drowned out—as when a true genius like Joe Jack Talcum of The Dead Milkmen winds up playing for a crowd of a half-dozen, trying to be heard over a larger group of oblivious drunks doing shots of Jäger at the bar of a now-defunct Hudson venue.
To act as if everyone you know in a given field is simply the best is a backhanded sort of stereotyping, one that ignores the human failings and foibles to be found in every profession or family. Yes, inclusiveness and outreach are important, appealing, universal ideals. But when quality gets so watered-down that community events turn into let-downs for everyone except the participants’ parents (here’s looking at you, ArtsWalk), it’s time to step back and reconsider our communal assumptions.
“Building community” ought to mean more than just token inclusion or offering every possible constituency something blandly palatable to its own lowest common denominator tastes. To build upon community skills first requires identifying and cultivating genuine talent. Only then can one really educate and galvanize each other, and give recognition and support to worthy people who may otherwise get overlooked. The scattershot approach, in which everyone gets a prize, is ultimately unfulfilling and even counterproductive, as rewarding mediocrity only leads to more of the same.
Talent, expansively defined, deserves better than to be lumped in with run-of-the-mill filler. Whether it’s a diner short-order chef who makes perfect home fries (rather than the usual slop), or a stone mason who’s really mastered and takes pride in his craft (rather than doing the bare minimum to get paid), or a local artist who makes truly mind-shifting work (rather than churning out perfunctorily acceptable images), or an especially dedicated Hospice volunteer (who is looking for more than just something to keep themselves occupied in their retirement), there are people among us who don’t deserve to get lost in the sea of other ho-hum food or art or volunteerism or whatever the medium for their talent happens to be.
Meanwhile, every spot is “local” to someone, even cookie-cutter places like Wal-Mart and Applebee’s if you work there or helped lay down the asphalt. But not every place is authentic, or interesting, or fun. Some places are measurably more alive and surprising and worthy of attention than others. There’s just a lot more chaff than wheat, or as my former editor Ana Marie Cox (now at Time Magazine) once said to me: “Look, Sam, 99% of everything sucks. Get used to it.”
Well, maybe we shouldn’t get used to it. Maybe we should keep our eyes more peeled for truly terrific stuff, and rhapsodize a lot less about disappointing pap. Naturally the second attitude makes life easier, helping to avoid discomfort among our friends and relations. The point here is not to encourage anyone to be needlessly, gratuitously cruel to those whose efforts fall flat: there’s a kernel of truth in the cliché about times when it’s better to not say anything at all. There’s also something to be said for reserving praise for the meritorious so that it actually means something.
“Community” doesn’t have to mean automatic, mindless, happy-clappy boosterism of anything and everything that anyone ever puts time into, without really investing the dues and care and insight necessary to make their effort really shine. Just because someone tried really hard or donated a few hours of work doesn’t guarantee that the result will be any good. Just because something is happening somewhere locally doesn’t mean it must be praised to the skies in every event calendar and freebie publication and email blast from the growing cadre of area publicists who need new material—any material, really—to earn their keep.
An associated problem is the notion that a healthy “community” must have perfect harmony, and that keeping things pleasant is more important than pushing things forward. Universal agreement and uniform admiration are as unachievable as they are dull, unless one has some deep-seated craving for a predictable and friction-free life. And yet that’s precisely the common attitude lamented by the fellow at the library raffle table: the leveling of all local activities and work and places into one undifferentiated stew of bland, unprovocative fare, all of it celebrated as “wonderful” and “brilliant” even when it’s barely OK.
As such, true “community” may be less about having things in common, and more about learning what is weird and surprising about a region’s inhabitants and places. We should build meaningfully on each others’ abilities and eccentricities, rather than erasing these differences out of some anxious need for safety and mindless positivity. As the old saying goes: Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
E N D N O T E S
* A particularly lamentable practice among some libraries is the annual sale of books which haven't been withdrawn for a certain period of time, say 10 years. Taken to its (il)logical conclusion, this practice eventually will lead to libraries consisting entirely of three Steven King novels and five Dr. Seuss picture books. It’s precisely that dusty, forgotten tome from 90 years ago which no one has opened for eons which is so valuable in the age of the Internet—the unexpected, accidental find which you couldn’t have known to look for, but happens to sit on the shelf next to the book you had thought you wanted.
** This friend’s bluntly honest statement called to mind Emerson’s advice in Self-Reliance “to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”
*** Overheard at a recent gallery opening, the words any serious artist least wants to hear: “Your work is so... creative!”
