Talking Story 
by Polo

Experts say, some of the first things new Americans neglect and then lose altogether, are our arts. It’s not that artists and poets and musicians mysteriously disappear, say, on their way to work or to Safeway or to our Saturday morning noodleshops. No. The problem is these important people not painting, not reciting, not composing and singing.

And what’s wrong is really simple: not enough time. Ask any newcomer. No one has sufficient emotional or spiritual space, not after our long, hard workdays. Not during our always too short nights. Not for art. Not for our deeper lives.

And this is so for both creators and for consumers of art. And this is so bad.

This is awful for all of us, for a thousand reasons. Our losses diminish both Portland’s newcomer communities and Oregon’s host society.

There’s a Viet Kieu oil painter, schooled in the Parisian tradition, working a quality-control job at Intel. He does it well, inspecting those motherboards. Of course he does. He makes proud his wife, he dresses well his high school boys. They save lots for their kids’ college. And who among us would ask that gentle man, what counts more: his family’s U.S. Bank account or Portland’s loss of precious cultural capital.

And what’s the right answer?

I know a Hmong musician, a St. Johns elder shaman. He spends more of his delicate health and advancing age coating metals with anti-corrosives than he does playing his six-bamboo pipe qeej. The knowledge inherent to that strong man’s stubborn Xiangkhoang highlander bones are not readily transferable into the terms and tones of digitalized commerce. Not translatable into shrill electrons. And who would ask this elder uncle to try making his lovely cultural legacy relevant to trendy Portlanders? Tired as he is, after another industrial workweek. Though the big question remains: What’ll we do in our silence when this weary man no longer plays?

Yes, experts say our song-catchers, our heart-talkers, our dream-keepers, are the first to go. Those with vocabularies straight from Creation, from our spirit world, from their restless ancestors. Those so vulnerable to America. Artists.

But what do they know? — I mean those experts. Of course, they know what experts input into handheld calculators. They count and rely on particular kinds of capital. The kind simple arithmetic manages well.

Social and spiritual and cultural capital is not among their figuring. These treasures are not quantifiable. No matter how you stack them up, empirical outcomes are not obvious. Imagine lining up a string of our boys and girls, some tall, some skinny, some smart, and some not; then arrange them from Chinese porcelain to Dove Bar dark — now treat them as integers. As numerically measurable. As human arithmetic. It can’t be done. And we shouldn’t try.

Instead of reducing our chances of a dignified American life, let’s do with our invaluable painters and poets and musicians what we do with our precious children — let’s show and tell and play with them.

No arguments with mainstream experts, no debates during these diminishing budget times, will get either our kids or our artistas what each deserves. What we owe each as their custodians.

What do experts know? — Not much more than us, and we can always prove them wrong. And have fun doing it. Let’s celebrate our arts, traditional or modern, visual and spoken and musical. When we breathe life into art, we light a fire inside us.

Beginning Friday night, February 27, Colored Pencils, together with the Center for Intercultural Organizing (CIO), will put on the first of Portland’s Colored Pencils Art and Culture Nights. Events are sponsored by the Latino Network, United Way of the Columbia-Willamette, and the City of Portland Office of Human Relations, Immigrant & Refugee Affairs. In addition to newcomer artists, poets, and musicians, local immigrant and refugee organizations will be featured, including the Cambodian-American Community of Oregon (CACO), Save Refugees (Iraqi relief and resettlement), and the Latino Network.

Colored Pencils Art and Culture Nights run from 5:30 to 9:30pm on the last Friday of each month. CIO will host the events at 700 N. Killingsworth Street in Portland. For more information, contact Nim Xuto at Colored Pencils at (503) 914-8170 or visit <www.coloredpencilsbooks.com>, or contact Oluyinka Akinijiola at CIO at (503) 287-4117 or visit <www.interculturalorganizing.org>.