A Very Adult Blog

I'm going to take up from where I left off last blog, when I was speculating on when I might be able to get a copy of the recording of my composition with the aforementioned choir. The answer: an indeterminate, possibly interminable amount of time. Yes... The plot thickens...

You see, it turns out that the project which gave us wannabe composers the chance to do this in the first place was (up until the end of last year as far as I can make out) state-funded (that dreaded phrase). As everybody has been reminded again and again for the past forever or so it would seem, the economy is pretty much shit at the moment. And as everybody also knows, we have a government whose first priorities don't even lie in education or a properly organised health care system, let alone anywhere near the arts. So I suppose it should hardly be surprising that the funding for a project such as this was probably the very first thing on the government's list to be removed when they realised they needed to cut loose a few sandbags. Hardly surprising at least to someone who keeps even remotely in the know about current affairs... it certainly caught me a bit by surprise anyway, me in my little 'my daddy's job is secure enough that I don't have to give a toss about anything except where I'm going interrailing next summer' bubble.

Upon further inquiry, I found out that not only has the possibility that the project would be continued in coming years been completely written off, but they've actually turned off the tap on the funding for the current project as well, which is obviously well underway. So everything regarding the recordings, everything, has been thrown up in the air, and no one knows what's happening at all at all.

(At this point I'm going to go very out of character and try to step back and consider the position of someone other than my horribly selfish self in this mess.)

Thinking about it, it's deductable that the choir who were running this programme are no longer being paid for there work regarding it. And, after educating myself on the matter a bit, I've found that they're no longer being funded for ANY of there projects. They were reliant on the state funding which up until so recently they had been receiving. That day at the recording in DCU, they weren't even being paid for. Now, I know it's difficult to put forward a case for their right to funding at a time like this, and it's undeniable that there are much more necessary causes which themselves have been cut; I'm not going to go as far as saying the choir deserve some state support more than, say, a school for the disabled that's had to tell it's students to go find somewhere else to learn as the state in cutting its losses and abandoning you (let's face it, you're not an investment that's going to 'pay off'). But at the same time, the waste of talent that the end of a choir like this, considered by many as the best of its kind in the country, a choir that can lend itself to faciliate and to inspire young people to write their own music, just seems unjustifiable to me. It is a travesty, plain and simple.

I'm a completely self-professed airhead when it comes this whole buisness of the recession, but based on the little I know about the economic climate, job losses and funding cuts, I'm brought to wonder at what is being done to invest in the future, and I don't mean next year or the year after that. My english teacher at school, who we'll call K, is adamant on this subject about the need for investment in young people and in education. You only have to look back through the countries history to see that that is true; the building of primary schools throughout the entire country back in a time where the economic issues weren't looking so hot either was the biggest single investment ever made into the country's education, and the pay-off is plain to see in our highly educated workforce and in the number of international buisnesses who choose to set up their bases here. So why isn't education the buzzword of these recessionary times? Why aren't people saying now's the time to pour investment into schools?
Another thing K likes to say is that when you were born in Hollis Street 18 years ago, you had no greater or lesser potential than a child born on the same day whose parent's were not as financially well off. The difference is, he now has a 50% chance of ending up in jail at some time in his life, while you have a 50% chance of being his barrister. Whatever about those statistics... A more obvious example of the failures that still exist in the education system, there ain't.

If people never in their life receive support or inspiration to achieve what potentially could achieve, what chance are they going to have in these gloomy times to succeed in making a happy life for themselves? The source of this kind of support and inspiration for many comes from the home, though not for all, but it should certainly come from school for everyone. Not even necessarily in the classroom... on the pitch, in an after-school club, in the friends you make there, even in the Young Scientist for god's sake. Or in a music programme which gives you a little bit of focus, a little bit of a nod to say 'you might actually have a few ideas there', a sense that you've made something real, a look through the window into the world of greatest singers you're likely to find.

Oh god, reading over this I cringe at how unbelieveably up myself I am...

But ye, it pretty much comes down to the fact that the government are a shower o' bastards who should know what really matters. Capitalist swine and all that, blahblahblha... But seriously, this blog could have been written by mashing up a tape recording of my english classes from the past two years and a website of the 10 most greatest inspirational speeches of all time. oh dear...