think -- I know -- it is impossible to write much of anything right now without conjuring up, or being conjured by, what happened on September 11. My wife and I were lucky -- I had refused a two-day temp assignment that would have put me in WTC #7 on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Maria, who works at St. Vincent's Hospital, the trauma center for the WTC, had her late-start day, which meant that the Lincoln Tunnel was closed by the time she was ready to go to work.  We watched the second plane and the double collapse from our redoubt in Weehawken; later in the week Maria and I along with friends volunteered at the Family Center to help people locate names and faces.

Attached to, or forming the body of, many emails from friends in Boston and around the country was a self-questioning about the relevance of art and artists in times like these, when the skills of doctor, nurse, welder, crane operator, project manager, and so on seemed so much more useful than vision and glibness and imagination and craft.  Answers were found, of course -- artists need to keep spirit/hope/vision alive, become the voice of the voiceless, remind people of better natures, etcetera.

But the answers didn't really interest me -- what interested me most was the pulse of anguish and self-doubt underneath the question. What did it mean to these artists to be "relevant"?  Had they not felt that their work was relevant before the assault on the WTC? (And if not, why were they doing what they were doing?)  Had they, perhaps, worn irrelevancy as a badge of honor, "irrelevance" freeing them from the skullduggery of commerce and success, and now felt ashamed of the indulgence?  Why were they now expecting their art to accomplish something more solid and hefty than entertainment or simply "moving" someone?

As I thought about their thoughts, the core desire that the destruction of the WTC seemed to evoke was eschatological in nature, haunted by the possibility of end-time: to have what they do as artists make a lasting difference.  As a measure of time, "lasting" can vary, but in the end it's about having what they do live after them in some other form in someone else and in such a way that it makes that person's life take a different direction (small or large).  In other words, it is to know that being an artist matters in a universe larger than the arena of one's ego.

How to measure the "difference" to feel that one has made a difference?  How to weigh the weight of "matters" to make sure it carries weight?  This is what I've concluded. In the end, my "relevance" as a playwright rests in the balance between two pans hanging from the beam, which I call "Verdi" and "Shakespeare."  Verdi said that "the box office is the proper thermometer of success," and who among us would not welcome the financial and public support that would come from a work garnering glory and attention (regardless of what reviewers and other scriveners say)?

But Verdi -- commercial success -- is only on one side of the balance beam.  The other, Shakespeare, addresses a different species of relevance.  To be sure, Shakespeare had his eye on the box office as well -- no money, no theatre.  But what we think of as "Shakespeare" has more to do with Harold Bloom's notion that Shakespeare "invented" our modern sense of being human -- of inwardness and self-examination -- and through his plays gave humans an invaluable way to (re)view themselves. 

Thus, to me, "relevance" as an artist is a blend of Verdi and Shakespeare.  "Verdi" is of the moment; "Shakespeare" is of the timeless. As finite artist-humans, we want and need to make our way in the world through what we do; we need the box office to feed the pocketbook and to reach wider and wider circles of people.  But we also have the desire to be known for how we have helped our fellow humans know themselves in deeper and more caressing ways, which for me means that I want to write plays that people will want to produce long after I'm dead and not just be the latest blip on the cultural radar.

I'm not an EMT, not a welder, not a forensic pathologist, not an architect.  I'm a scribbler, and I have to realize that at times like these, my scribbles will be irrelevant to the work at hand.  But I also know that when they are working full-bore on what they love, artists will build, through their blending of Verdi and Shakespeare, in concert and tandem with all artists everywhere, an atmosphere, a flavor, a rasa, that life has relevance because of what art can offer to help us understand ourselves and bring forward the better angels of our natures.  In the end, during and after all the coming mayhem and revenge and blood-spilling, this is the real relevance of art and artists: to remind us of the light, the compassion, the laughter and tender imperfections that make us human and not animals, that make us lovers and not scourges.  As long as artists continue to explore and explain this, to make art that makes a difference over the long-haul, their work, and their selves, will always be relevant.

© 2001 Michael Bettencourt

Michael Bettencourt has had his plays
 produced in New York, Chicago,
Boston, and Los Angeles, among others.
  Continued thanks to his "prime mate"
and wife, Maria-Beatriz

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Winter 2001