Where do the artists dwell?

Everywhere that is inspired by art and culture is expensive and thereby often excludes the very makers of said art. Think of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Paris, for example. Not every artist has the money to live in these cultural, artistically-supportive environments. In face, most do not.

This fiscal limitation leaves the artist, presumably, to settle in more affordable areas. In California, an example of such an area is San Bernardino. But as anyone who has stepped foot in San Bernardino will tell you, that is not a land of impoverished artists. Though this does not mean that they aren't there, hiding out behind the cheap rents and mortgages. And, of course, there are the people who stay with their parents for what would have previously been considered an obscene amount of time. Yes, the average artist in California seems to be hiding out, Jack Kerouac-style, in suburbia, and hardly to be found in the fancy locals listed above.

I can only assume, and consult my limited experience of growing up in anti-intellectual settings myself with little to no art to speak of, that this lack of community or home base among artists must be damaging. Art is of itself an isolating endeavor and to push onward with its production without even the regular respite that consultation with other artists can provide is all the more depressing a notion.

But communities are formed from this very need even in a place as seemingly culturally barren as San Bernardino. And maybe those communities and their collective artistic endeavors are actually stronger as a result of their lack of competition. After all, what is a new literary magazine in the grand scheme of L.A.? But in Pomona, the Inland Empire, it gets notice even if for nothing else than being one of a very small gathering of its kind.

However, this positive thinking is not enough for me to put to bed the notion of how wonderful it must have been to be an artist in 1920s Paris, at the center of the cultural world and of production of meaningful art (I just watched Midnight in Paris again so pardon the momentary daydream). I realize that that setting has been glamorized and the extent to which many of the famous 20s writers were living the romantic yet impoverished life in fabulously rundown apartments is exaggerated and misunderstood. But one fact remains indisputable, they were real artists and expats living in Paris and creating. Can that even happen now?

And why aren't the artists dwelling in San Bernardino and other comparable areas not having more of an affect on the cultural environments in which they reside? Why do we have to drive to the ArcLight to see an independent movie? All I can assume is that, in the Inland Empire, the population of the culturally curious and insightful is still much less than that of everyone else, and that can be quite frustrating. And this is likely because the people who do happen have the money to make any lasting changes to the fabric of a community's culture are still largely the ones who choose to leave those areas most in need.

Plenty of brilliant artist have come out of culturally-needy communities. However, that said, all artists, desire to experience the satisfaction of a more artistically aware environment. But the choice to live the life of an artist often is one that diminishes or all together excludes the income required to live in such a setting. The alternative- of creating, in the case of A Few Lines, our own literary community in the face of a seeming lack of one- has proven to be a satisfying one. Can't live in a literary center? Create one.

Now if we could just get Ontario Mills to show some decent movies.