"After the music concluded, my hands automatically lifted to applaud, but I held my breath instead slowly dropping my arms. No one applauded. There was hardly a sound in the room. I moved quietly to a nearby chair against the wall and sat down.
The musician’s face relaxed into a new countenance. The audience waited. No one moved. Then, just at the moment of complete readiness, he lifted his violin and began to play again. I had never heard or felt anything quite like it in my life. As the music continued, everyone in the room seemed to be breathing together: inhaling, exhaling – breathing in the aesthetic again and again. I thought that these were remarkably hopeful moments – as if the music’s soul was being presented.
After the last note, a kind of rich silence fell over the audience leaving it in something of a tableau suspended in a state of awe. There were no calls for encores; no clapping; no shouts of “Bravo!” no tossing of flowers onto the stage; no whistles or whoops; no customary standing ovation. The sweat on the musician’s face sparkled in the light framing his smile, and he said, “Thank you for coming!” He lowered his head and walked off of the stage."
Chapter VII of U.S. Crisis: Art, Education and Society takes the reader to The Academy - an imaginary campus. There, the students, faculty, everything about the campus, really, exhibits education as it ought to be. The reader strolls through The Great City, attends a concert, happens upon an exotic campus (The Academy), participates in a remarkable aesthetics class, meets marvelous students and learns of The Academy's philosophy at a "faculty seminar" - a get-together of The Academy's faculty at a local pub.
– Gary Funk
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