We Asked 12 Naptown Artists: Is The City Ready For A National Look?

We asked twelve people the same question over three weeks: is Indianapolis ready for a national look? We did not define "ready" and that turned out to be the interesting part, because nobody asked us to.

The Four Yeses

Four answered yes immediately, without qualifying it. All four were artists with a project out in the last twelve months. Make of that what you will.

"We been ready. Ready ain't the problem. Somebody looking is the problem." — Lady Prime

The Five Who Said No First

Five said some version of the same thing: that the city competes with itself harder than it competes with anywhere else, and that a national look landing on one person right now would break more than it fixed.

One put it bluntly enough that we are quoting it anonymously at their request: "If one of us blows up tomorrow, half this city is gonna spend a year explaining why it should have been them instead. That's the part we ain't ready for."

The Three Who Wouldn't

Three declined to answer on record. Two of those three gave us long, thoughtful, completely unusable answers off record. The third just said "no comment," which we are including because it was funnier than anything we could have printed.

What We Think

The question was wrong. "Ready" implies a finish line and a judge. What actually happened this month was that one artist signed a deal and stayed put, which is not a national look and might be more durable than one.