in our previous video we discussed that there is a difference between art and entertainment in this video we're gonna elaborate on that difference we said that art is man's attempt or human beings attempt to capture the human spirit and to touch upon intellectually elusive meanings man's attempt to capture the human spirit and to touch upon intellectually elusive meanings let's talk about that term because that's a two parter the first half man's attempt to capture the human spirit is kind of the easy part for artists and that's what artists are here to do they are to capture who we are what we've become in their minds as a society or as a family unit or something like this and to put that sentiment in their medium whether it be a painting or a song or a poem or a script a sculpture or something like this now we may disagree with their assessment of who we are what they become our what we become they often have a difficult is just like the rest of us or some ideological slant that gets put into it but that's fun based on their view of the world they capture who we are and what we're all about and they put it into their medium so let's talk about that man's attempt to capture the human spirit in my traditional classes I often asked how many of you have ever seen the movie Grease and much to my surprise not anymore of my surprise but for years I was surprised every hand in the room goes up it's like every student has watched Greece you know Greece was a movie written when I was in high school in the upper mid 70s about a time when my parents your grandparents were in high school in the upper mid 50s too 19:58 to be exact and here today everybody's still watching grease young people still love the movie grease which was originally a Broadway play most movies that share a title with the play were plays first and they were such a hit on Broadway Hollywood purchases the rights to do their stuff with it so everybody watches grease and I asked them I say Why What what's the lure in this production why does everybody enjoy this movie and they'll try to answer it they'll say oh it's it's got cool music Oh Olivia newton-john she she was a start we'll look there are a lot of movies to that today and in the past that we still watch today they have cool music and stars that we once loved that maybe still do but we but not every hand goes up in the room when you ask them something like that how many people who watch Conair not every hand in the room goes up how many people watch grace food every hand goes up I'll argue that the reason grease has that draw has that lure is because it's a work of art the people who wrote the lyrics the people who wrote the script captured something there are many who argue I would be one of them that I was narrowed down middle white America in 1958 was probably are in the 1950s was probably one of the best places and decades to live as a human being throughout the entire history of the human race there are other eras and generations maybe in cultures of self-worth that might make a valid argument but I'm going to argue that the 1950s is right up there why because it was such a time of innocence and I don't mean you know where people were not misbehaving and stuff like this I mean grease is all about misbehaving I would but but as we didn't doubt our government we we didn't distrust our neighbor and all it would you know our doors stay to unlock that night and stuff like this in Greece it shows a time in 1950s where all that mattered to these young people were poodle skirts and leather jackets and you know cool hairstyles and rock and roll music burger joints drag racing and making out and if you didn't have one of those components in your life oh it was the end of the world you know if grease shows a time that if you didn't have the money to to fund a date on Friday night no big deal as long as you had a job and most people did you know you you have week five days to cover that check you can cover that day and as long as you got paid before the end of the week you know you weren't in any trouble at all when I was growing up in the 70s it was narrowed down to three days but if I didn't have money on Friday night but knew I was gonna get paid Monday or Tuesday I could write that check and I was covered you poor kids don't live in that world you poor kids you know if you're a single parent and you're shopping for your kids you have a gallon of milk at Walmart you're 25 cents short I when they run the check through boom every light flashes and pointed arrows look down on you and and sirens go off and they say put that milk back on the shelf and that thing's not covered I really hate that for you to be perfectly honest where your grandparents were worried about poodle skirts and dances and drag racing and burger joints you guys have to worry about am I gonna have enough gas to get to work tomorrow morning am I going to have a job tomorrow morning am I going to have enough gas to get to school back then we gave our kids curfews but we didn't worry about them coming home at night in today's world we worry about them making at home at night we worry about child predators sneaking into our house we worry about child predators being on the end of the couch coming through an iPhone that one of our children is playing around on because we don't see it happening right under our nose in the 50s well there was that evil element it wasn't a threat under that roof you know we don't worry about those people coming in and doing that to the degree that we do today it was such a wonderful time as a nation we didn't worry about people who hated us so much that they were willing to give up their own families and their own livelihood and strap themselves to a cockpit and fly into a building and kill us three thousand at a time simply because they didn't like the way we live we didn't worry about AIDS or any of those things back then it was a wonderful time and the people who wrote grease the lyricists and the script writers captured that and they put it into form on that stage think about it as students you know when my parents were going to school they were assigned a term paper why because it took the entire semester to write the dining thing you know they had a research and they had to go this dinosaur which I had to go to call card catalog and you find an article or a book or a magazine or something that fits your title and you go to the library and say help me find this and she says oh I can't find it we don't have it you might want to go to the County Library and you go to the County Library and they look around they say we don't have it they call Jonesboro the Jonesboro Library has it but you're living here you know it's not enough I can't drive yet maybe and you go to mom and say mom when you go to Jonesboro next Thursday can I ride with you and go we drop me off at the library for about an hour so I could do some research and you have to wait a week till next Thursday to do all of that and it took forever to write that term paper once you got all the information then you start picking around another ancient thing called a typewriter you know if you got one letter wrong you have to rip the page out start all over again because they wouldn't accept any any flaw such as that or a fee misspelled a word and didn't correct itself automatically you guys are born with these little devices in your hands those smartphones you can do your research your your you can write the thing with all the spell checking and thing format itself for you practically between classes to keep from being bored you would think well doesn't that make our world better no it doesn't because now instead of you writing a term paper would make you write five or seven or eight even sometimes you know we go oh they can do all this a lot faster we just give you more to do and more deadlines to deal with and stuff like that no Greece was a wonderful time alright and I argue that one hundred hundred fifty years from now and none of us are around and there is some professor in one of our BR TC classrooms talking to a group of students that they will be more apt to learn more about the human condition by watching a well produced production of Greece than they ever would by cracking open a textbook why because you open that textbook you might learn in a few paragraphs about the early days stages of the Cold War you might learn about you know Sputnik or wheat contracts or something like this but you watch that well-preserved production of grease which is per that time has now captured and preserved for all times as long as that script exists you're going to learn about the passion of that group of people that lived back then and their hurts and their joys and their desires and all of that and it's entertaining too because they they kick in a costume plot which kind of captures what things were like they kick in that cool music we make fun of it a little bit now because it was my parents music your grandparents music but we know when we step back far enough that was some of the coolest music ever produced in American culture that music is in there and the lyrics and the dialogue of the script itself captures what we would call now the petty silliness that really worked these teenagers up at that time and I know I look at that play that movie sometimes at all and when I was younger I would roll my eyes and how silly that was I got a little older and I would laugh at just how easy life was and we tend to forget and now I look back at stuff like that and I smile because as silly as the pettiness was that those characters got wrapped up in uh you look back you go WOW life was never better than it was at that time that was the 70s for me but I'm speaking on behalf of my parents generation the other half of the definition of art is to touch upon intellectually elusive meanings and in my personal opinion that's the real work of the artist to touch upon intellectually elusive meanings meaning the artist is now trying to put into sentiment that we regular folks can't find the words to describe ourselves you know what I'm talking about have you ever had something just so exciting happen in your life that you try to tell it to someone who didn't experience it and you can see in their eyes that they don't get it and finally just forget it you had to be there artists have a great way poets have a great way of capturing that for us putting that sentiment into their medium they can do it with a painting and a dance and a song they can do it on and on in the script for a play as well I don't know you know in my traditional classes I'll say how many of you have kids and there'll be a hand or two sometimes three or four hands will go up I have children of course they're grown and I will I will look at the class us okay the four of us are the only people in this room who have an understanding of what I'm about to discuss and the rest of you have no idea because unless you've had the birth of your first child there's no way we can explain to the other folks what that moment was like there's no way we can put into words what it's like they have this brand-new human being this total stranger that we've never met before placed in our arms looking at a up at us we've never met them but there's an instant bond so strong that says you know what you have just now become the most important person in my life you are the one human being that I will lay it all down for you can't describe to someone who hasn't had a child yet what that moment is like there are words that we that we use and I'll ask my students and my classes I'll say now what word and they love that's the big word yeah we love them that is a and that's an appropriate word it's kind of like you know it's kind of like our previous video talking about art it's an accurate word but it doesn't separate itself from the other things that we love because we love a good cheeseburger too don't we you know some of you are out there going hey it's that good I might go get me a couple of those no stick to the cheeseburger wait just a little while on the children but look it doesn't cut it you know they're it's so much larger than that and most of us can't find the words to capture them to communicate that sentiment but artists can do that for us that's why art is it might be more about a work of art might be more valuable to me than it might to you because I see something that captures that sentiment that I've never been able to put together myself you know how many of you have ever been asked tell me about your spouse tell me about your husband or your wife or your boyfriend or your girlfriend it's kind of a tough one to answer oh no you want me to say she's wife I mean she's okay I don't know what do you want me to say it's kind of hard to put that in terms into sentiments sometimes with the words that we try to try to find with a limited vocabulary but artists have a way I'll tell you quickly when I first started working at this college it was decades ago now and I had not yet been married two years we had not been married two years yet so really we were still kind of newlywed phases we had just had a firstborn wasn't even a year old yet and the school was going to send me on my first away trip it was a two-year college conference where I was going to be gone for three days and two nights I had never been away from home everyone and didn't want to do it my wife didn't want me to go she didn't I you know I didn't want to go and all of that I want to stay here I want you to stay here well that changes to overtime probably two or three times before the end of this week she's gonna look at me and say hey don't you have some conference to go to but this was a different time and I didn't want to leave we had that little baby who was a colicky baby by the way that's another question I ask in my traditional classrooms how many of you who have children have had a children with colic maybe one two hands will go up and I'll say okay now we are the only two people or three people in this room who knows what I'm talking about because unless you've experienced that you can't describe that either see the colicky baby is that one thing in life in my opinion that always warrants the waiting game and if you don't know what I mean by the waiting game is because you're not married you don't have a colicky baby the waiting game is when it's 2:00 in the morning and that baby starts kicking up and crying little loud stretch his legs and trembling and stuff like that both of you are lying there waiting to see which one is going to get up and do something about that child well you're looking at the victor sad enough I won the waiting game more times than too many times more times than I really want to admit but there was a reason before you hate me that much I mean I was actually one of the most important people in America at that time I was into softball leagues I was trying to put a theater program together I was working on my master's degree and I had a job doggone that's plenty of reason to be able to you know when the waiting game and I would we'd lie there I'd wait she'd get up she take care of that maybe next morning I wake up and I feel a little bit guilty but not guilty enough to turn right around when that waiting game all over again so the school sends me on this two-year college trip I don't want to go I don't want you to go over be here with you and the baby and all that and off I went they sent me to Hot Springs now I thought I mean yeah hot springs I thought I had been the hot springs a few times in my life but I hadn't you know hot springs at that point look the same as Newport or Batesville or you know Walnut Ridge or anywhere else it was there was a goalpost 50 yards that way the goalposts 50 yards that way and I would play my percussion instrumentation in March band marching band and look at a crowd of people waiting for the second half of a game to start but now I was really going to see hot springs and if you've ever seen hot springs down to the downtown the antique district you know what I'm about to talk about it is one of the most beautiful places in the state it was fall you know when the temperatures were dropping and the leaves were changing colors and the sky was bright but the shadows were long and I was broke I was brain doing my job we were newlyweds we had a baby and if you walk up and down that district it's got a lot of neat little shops that you look in they're really tricking and you want to walk in and I was missing home I was between sessions late in an afternoon I had some time to kill and I'm walking through these sidewalks in the downtown district the hot springs and I passed the window to my right and inside that window there was a series of art work on plays series of plates with hand-painted work on I'm not talking about the plates that grandma has in her kitchen with all 50 states or all of John Wayne's movies or something like that this was by a renowned artist who did these oils on these plates with each image he would paint 50 and there would only be one in your country and it would be 49 other countries that would have one of these images and they were they weren't printed stamped each one was hand-painted so if you had one I had one from two different countries we look real close you might see a little something different here with a brush stroke or something like that and his theme always had to do with young motherhood or early childhood well I'm in hot springs I'm lonely I'm missing home I'm broke it's real pretty it's fall my favorite time of year I looked through that window and there were these plays and on one of those plates there was this image and in that image there was a beautiful young woman and she was tired you could see it in her eyes the circles under her eyes she had long pretty but disheveled hair she was wearing a nightgown and it was all wrinkled up and as she was tired and she was off the bed knelt down with her back to the bed facing a crib man a baby crib over her shoulder you saw the flu at the corner of the bed and a pair of feet which I recognized I knew those feet all right and past the feet in the corner of the bed was a dresser non that dresser wasn't a little clock and the clock was illuminated by a shaft of moonlight coming through a window that wasn't even in the painting but he knew that window was there by the angle of the light and it illuminated that clock and had said 158 so what time of day are we talking about here yeah we're talking about two o'clock in the morning and there's this guy sound asleep in this band here's this beautiful tired young mother knelt down beside the bed with her back to the bed facing a crib looking at a baby who wasn't crying and hacking and kicking and screaming that baby just wanted to play because they do that at two o'clock in the morning also that baby just wanted to play and there was that pretty young woman given that baby the time of its life and I went in and I talked to the guy who was selling that art and I said how much is it for that plate right there and he told me and after I came to after I picked myself up off the floor but it was expensive I bet something I thought I'd never do in my life I did something he's to ridicule hey no wait I'd pay that much money from her I pulled out my American Express card and I bought that plate that says how much I was moved by that plane I learned a lot from it I was Ben I bought that plane I came home I thought when you hit over the head with it you spent how much on a plate okay and that plate sets in a room that I have at my house it's not doesn't have a spotlight on it or anything and there's a chair there's a little table by it a lap and some little flower on the wall or something and there's that plate just kind of in there somewhere in that room I have a bunch of other little things they kind of mean something to me but no one else I'll die someday and the kids will sell it all for 50 cents apiece on the front yard during yard sale but to me it means everything why because if you're standing in my living room even today at this age and you say to me tell me about your wife all I have to do is say right there all I have to do is point to that plate why because that plate captured the spirit of that young woman who is still in her she's a grandma now and millions others just like her and it touched upon intellectually elusive meanings if put into words things that I would never be able to say on my own and I learned a few little things about myself as well and I think when I came home from hot springs I was a little bit better husband a little bit better daddy and all of that kind of stuff and that's what art is it captures the human spirit it touches upon intellectually elusive meanings it does for the rest of us those things that we wish we could communicate but don't have the skills to do so and if you understand that it makes you appreciate a song a little more or a painting a little more or a play a little more which we will talk about in here the word that we compare our to is entertainment entertainment simply put is the pleasure afforded by being amused the pleasure of Ford by being amused meaning entertainment is only there to make us happy to give us pleasure and in our next video I will elaborate on entertainment