Too often I hear certain radio hosts and talk-show pundits using their first-amendment protected soapboxes to whine and grandstand about how artist/entertainers like the Dixie Chicks and Bruce Springsteen ought to ‘shut up about politics and just make music.’ The more you try to take art out of political discourse, the more our art will reflect the politics of disenfranchisement and rightful anger. And the louder we will be. I’ve heard them say on their radio shows ‘they prefer art to be more subtle, less preachy.’ To which I reply: help us help you. Help us learn subtlety by funding arts programs in our schools; help us be less preachy by not turning NPR into FoxNews 2 and the NEA into the First National Bank of Pleasantville. Asking artists to ‘shut up and sing’ is asking us to leave our minds and hearts at home. As if artists were a kind of really advanced search engine-even better than Google-where you plug in your search term and get precisely what you want and NOTHING else. Nothing personal. As if an artist were a machine made of finger, vocal chords, and guitar and played nothing but comfort and happiness for you. I don’t know about you, but that’s not my kind of entertainment, and it’s certainly not art. Art demands freedom. My art demands 100% of me: senses, mind, experiences, heart, soul, and politics. Art demands not only that I be engaged, it demands that you as listeners, readers, watchers engage with it and me. Whether you like a piece or not, if it’s doing its job, art makes you think and feel. Art makes you feel more alive, bigger than you were the moment before you experienced it. Art breeds dialogue, something the forefathers and mothers sewed into the fabric of this still free as of this morning country. You don’t have to like an artist’s politics, or his social ideas, to like his art. Or vice versa. I love Springsteen’s politics and I love his songs, but I don’t like his voice. Same goes for Bob Dylan. I find Jeanine Garofalo insightful and intelligent on Air America, but I’d rather hear her stand-up. I’d never given the Dixie Chicks a chance until I learned more about them through their clash with politics. Art isn’t and shouldn’t be a newscast… it’s shouldn’t be like watching the senate on C-SPAN. (Although I hear some people ARE entertained by that.) Without mind, heart, voice, and soul, art is just meaningless pictures and noise.

Shea is an upcoming young poet and llama farmer. And the Associate Arts Editor for the Mass Media. Email him at [email protected].