Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside of us.-unknown

I supported local music today. I have a friend and she is trying to make a go of it as a professional musician. She is beautiful and wonderful and talented...but I am afraid that not even those characteristics will give her success. At least two times a week she gets up in front of an audience, just her and her banjo, and she plays songs that she has written - yup, she lays all of those feelings out for everyone to see - and she makes (on a good night) $50 in tips. It's a hard life. You always hear stories about starving artists... and many would say that an artist's personal experiences drive her work, but it is still hard. Very very hard. So I design her posters and fliers for her, I send out press releases for her, and I keep my eye out for gigs that she can play.

The way that we support our artists in this country is atrocious. This week, in the Huffington Post, Raymond J. Learsy (former member of The National Council for the Arts) points out that our visual artists, our filmmakers, our writers, and yes, our musicians, are marginalized by our government.

"And yet we have used this enormous potential of defining to others who we are only haltingly and too often with only the most reluctant advocacy. The role of government support for the arts in our society has always been an open question, debated but never fully resolved."

I believe that it is a question of worthiness. We are willing to spend billions on military bombers, but not on our artists. Not on our art. The National Endowment for the Arts budget in 2007 was $144.7 million dollars. The similar national arts organization in France: $3.75 billion. And by the way, France has a LOT less people than the United States.

I don't believe that any of us can say that we have not been affected by art. My sister spends her days teaching music to children. Could she make more money if she made the decision to leave her job and join the corporate world? Certainly. So could my friend the writer, my friends in Arts Administration, and my singer/songwriter/banjo-pickin' pal. But they don't. Instead they have dedicated their lives so that ours might be beautiful and spiritual and...meaningful.

So get out there and support your local arts. And vote in this election. Vote like your soul depends on it.