Modern Warrior LIVE is a unique and moving theatrical experience that mixes first-person narrative with music and multimedia to chronicle US Army Veteran Jaymes Poling’s story of his three deployments to Afghanistan and subsequent transition back home. In today’s podcast, I speak with its co-creators, Jaymes Poling and jazz trumpeter Dominick Farinacci about the conception of Modern Warrior LIVE and their process of working together—both in creating the show and performing in it. Poling discusses his own challenges when transitioning to civilian life and the importance of writing to his healing process. They also talk about the sense of responsibility they feel to the audience, their outreach to veteran communities, the centrality of talk-backs as part of the show, and their making local mental health and veteran resources available to the audience.
By Any Measure
No art unconsidered
I look forward to listening to this podcast, but by posting this, we see yet another link between the NEA (since that’s where you work) and the US military. We all understand the connections between the NEA and the military community are an effort to push arts funding across the political aisle. After all, the funding for military bands is three times higher than the entire NEA budget, and probably at least ten times what the NEA spends on classical music (my field.) It’s another example of the ways in which the military permeates virtually every level of American society and culture. “By their deeds you will know them. Does a man gather grapes from thorns or figs from briars?” We create such a deeply militarized society and then wonder why 18 year-old boys want to buy an AR-15 the minute they turn 18.
Last week, once again, we reaped what we have sown. When I listen to this podcast, I hope to hear something that will give me hope that artists and the NEA are trying to change this militarized culture of violence instead of reinforcing it. Uvalde reminds us that the NEA and the arts have a responsibility to lead a cultural reform. Yes, that’s what the arts do, and that is a significant part of the NEA’s role, a role that it is all but forbidden to exercise by the totalizing reactionary forces in our country. A plain truth.