Country music moved into the studio, and New York City decided to give the kids a place to paint. Like country music, graffiti loses something when it gets commercialized, or city government promotes it as an advertisement to congratulate ourselves on our multiculturalism. Real progress, as Horowitz sees it, would be an open community of critical discussion of the arts, which is hard to create in our genteel town. What makes the development of a real artistic community difficult in Nashville is that everybody knows everybody. It s a small community with a politeness problem.
Politeness prevents critical discussion.
We don t like to hurt feelings, so there s no real dialog or debate to push things forward. Lachs gets impatient with narrow visions. Here s an example of real progress, he says forcefully. When my wife and I came to Nashville, we saw no African-Americans in the restaurants where we ate. It wasn t against the law, but they would have felt uncomfortable.