Gene Wilde once said “all art is useless.”  Think about it.  Those paintings you have hanging on your walls don’t actually do anything.  That little sculpture or vase sitting on your living room table serves no purpose.  All those novels you’ve read and have kept stacked neatly together on the shelves of your bookcase are just gathering dust.  They all do nothing.  They have no real use. 

            A hammer beats in a nail.  A screwdriver twists in a screw.  A computer processes information, saves information, allows communication, draws, and does dozens and dozens of other things.  A car drives and transports people to places.  All these things are utilitarian.  They were conceived and built to serve a particular purpose.  No one can say the same thing about art. 

            You can argue that it decorates a place, or in the case of novels, movies, and poetry, that it entertains, but those aren’t essential uses.  If you want decoration on your wall, you can just use different paint.  You can live without watching the latest movie at the theater or buying the newest bestselling mystery novel that’s just hit all the bookstores and newsstands.  You can’t use art to pay your rent or put food on your table.  And you can’t eat art either.  It won’t clean your bedroom, pay your bills, or wake you up in the morning. 

            But that’s not to say that art has no place in the world.  It’s not essential to anyone’s life, but it is needed.  How would you feel making the hour-long drive to work without being able to listen to the music on your car radio?  And doesn’t that brilliant painting a bright blue sky make you feel revived and fresh every morning?  Don’t tell me there’s any better way to call it a night than tucking yourself into bed and then reaching over to finish that book you’ve been plowing through all week long. 

            We need the arts to inspire, entertain, and, in some cases, educate us.  Without it, our lives would have no flavor.   We’d just wake up, ear, march off to work, come home, eat again, and sleep.  We would have nothing to look forward to and nothing to make us feel special. 

            And, regardless of what anyone else says, the arts are hard work.  Not just anyone can sit down and write ten pages of a story and have it all make sense and be riveting.  Not just anyone can splash paint against a canvas and have it end up a meaningful painting.  In fact, not just anyone can work with paint at all and use it to make a clear, recognizable picture. 

            And without having different tastes in music, art, movies, and more, we would have nothing else to define and separate us from everybody else.  We’d all dress the same, live in places that all look the same, and all dream the same dreams.  That’s why we need the arts in our lives, even if they have no essential, obvious use.  The arts just are and we love them for it.