Bad Times, Bad Times

With those dismal words of Naomi Wolf still ringing in my ears.

There is a marked degradation in what can only be called aesthetics, and a great deal of erasure of what had been the presence of the treasures of Western culture.

If you are a child going to the Brooklyn Museum on a field trip, you will literally have no idea what the Western artistic heritage has been, but you will learn that it is bad.

I see this item in the Victoria Times Colonist: Difficult times for Alix Goolden Hall

Not so long ago the VCM’s Alix Goolden Performance Hall was a busy venue for a wide variety of musical performances. I believe it was regularly rented by local and out of town musical acts.

It can accommodate a large audience and has excellent acoustics and sightlines.

These days it mostly appears to host conservatory related recitals. I imagine that without the Pandora Avenue entrance the allowable seating capacity in the hall is greatly reduced.

This is, of course, due to the city’s continuing toleration of the antics on Pandora. The conservatory has become a kind of fortress. Folks are permitted to camp directly on the sidewalk in front of the hall’s main entrance. I have to wonder why that is even permitted.

There is a photo:

What you are looking at is the entrance to the concert hall of the Victoria Conservatory of Music. When it was inaugurated it was seen a wonderful venue for all the gifted performers that would emerge from the new premises of the conservatory. This is personal for me as my first job after university was as chair of the guitar department at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, a fine institution with high standards headed by the pianists Robin and Winifred Wood, both graduates of the Royal Academy in London. Outstanding performers like violinist Sydney Humphries and pianist Eva Solar-Kindermann also taught there. I felt honored to be invited to join the faculty. Nowadays it is a shadow of its former self with fewer and fewer classical students as they are edged out by more and more programs devoted to popular music. When I was there the classical guitar department had several teachers and dozens of students. Now there is a mere handful of students and most of the teachers have long since departed. The descent of the exterior of the concert hall into a dystopian hell is symbolic.