Can arts play a role in reinventing Labour Day?
According to the current Wikipedia article on the subject, Labour Day as we know it originated in Canada and was adopted in the United States shortly afterwards. Over the years, its original meaning and purpose have eroded to the vanishing point.
Given that it’s our invention, could Canada lead an effort to restore some meaning to a longstanding tradition? And could the arts play a role here?
The name may be part of the problem. A search on the origin of the word “labour” led me to the “Merriam-Webster’s Student Thesaurus:” “Synonyms: drudgery, grind, slavery, sweat, toil, travail. Antonyms: fun, play.”
When you hear the word “labour,” artistic pursuits don’t spring readily to mind. Widely prevalent attitudes would place them closer to the antonyms, in the realm of fun and play. Compared to hard labour, or even honest labour, the arts are considered frivolous.
“North American Workers’ Day” or “Workers’ Day CanUSA” (as distinct from International Workers’ Day, which is celebrated on May 1 in most of the rest of the world, including Mexico) might be an improvement.
“Work” is more inclusive. Everyone who is gainfully employed goes to work, and spends time at work, while only a fraction of the workforce labours.
The term “cultural workers” is heard fairly frequently; it’s never cultural labour.
And, of course, artists in most disciplines create, or perform as part of, works.
One of the fundamental tasks of arts advocacy is upholding the value of artistic work. Clichés about artists as feckless bohemians, driven by their passions, with the primary goal of “expressing themselves” impede such efforts.
The fact that cultural workers in fields such as music, theatre and cinema are known as players further complicates the picture.
A famous quotation from Mark Twain comes to mind here: “Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.”
Twain’s classic literary works were written around the time Labour Day was first established. Part of the context was the struggle for an eight-hour day: “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.”
As Twain observed, what we do for recreation is often closely related to what is considered work. The crux of the matter is usually whether one has a choice in the matter: play is what we choose to do; work is what are forced to do to make a living.
The fact that so many would love to fill their days doing what artists do for a living is part of what makes artistic work seem frivolous in comparison to mainstream work.
All too often, a career in the arts remains a struggle, the same as it ever was. And cultural pursuits can be as laborious as any other field of occupation. People stay on this path, despite the challenges, because they want to.
This is why, although a life in the arts may be difficult, it is also a privilege.
If it wasn’t such a struggle, large numbers of people in all walks of life would find paths to artistic pursuits – young people, those in mid-career, and those approaching the end of their careers.
And why shouldn’t they? That’s a question worth thinking about on Labour Day, 2018.
Labour meaning drudgery, grind, sweat, toil and travail will never be eliminated altogether. The ideal here is not to relegate it all to some mud sill underclass or to outliers in lands far away, but for each of us to do our share.
But it’s not the drudgery that’s holding us back. It’s that, through a combination of factors, we’ve chained ourselves to styles and systems of living that are wasting our days, confounding our pursuits of happiness and destroying the planet in the process.
The arts may hold the key to liberation from this kind of servitude, and to the promise of meaningful, fulfilling work for everyone.