Why the arts matter even during a recession

There's a recent article in Christianity Today by Canadian singer-songwriter Carolyn Arends that I thought was worth bringing to your attention:

Saying More Than We Can Say: Why the arts matter even during a recession

October Poem of the Month

Ode to Uncertainty

You come with Janus-face, your quartet of eyes
turned towards me in a quick succession: psychedelic
cycle, counterpoint of circle and plane, a lunacy
contrived by velocity with valence and designed well if

madness is the goal. Only your luminous glances,
dancing a whirling dervish, are colored: a gloom
for your robe is a charcoal carving, a sketch-book fancy
faded into nightmare, a chiaroscuro gone monochrome.

Your motion in stillness could nauseate;
your monstrous size inside my small mind is uncanny—
strange, then, how solid you are in this crowded place,
and you stink like a dead man and squall like a baby.

Yet I never thought to question: are you real?
Or are you just a side effect of how this century wants to feel?