Branching Out:
A Creative Guide to Public Services
by John Lithgow

John Lithgow is a renowned television, theater and movie actor, earning him multiple Emmy and Tony awards, as well as two Oscar nominations. Lithgow is also a singer, dancer and best-selling author of children’s books. His most recent, “Mahalia Mouse Goes to College,” is calculated to instill an interest in higher education
in young children.



We actors make our reputations and build our careers by speaking other people’s words. Ask us to express our own thoughts and you never know what’s going to come out — I barely know myself!

My reflexive instinct is to entertain, but sometimes wisdom is called for. But wisdom from an actor?

If I were a wise man, I never would have gone into the acting profession. So rather than presuming to pass down wisdom, I want to share some anecdotes from my curiously picaresque life and career, and I leave it to you to root out any scraps of wisdom therein.

I bet that word picaresque got your attention. I’m afraid it is one of the few words that I remember from my four years of college. Picaresque is used to describe a long adventure that teaches its hero a series of lessons to live by. Although I hesitate to dub myself a hero, my adventures have indeed taught me a few stray lessons in life.

The lessons I’ve learned basically boil down to four succinct phrases: be CREATIVE, be USEFUL, be PRACTICAL and be GENEROUS. And now for the adventures.

Whenever an actor does something notable, whether that something happens to be very good or very bad, everyone knows about it. But some of my less public adventures are to
me the most fascinating, and the
most meaningful.

Forty years ago, I graduated from Harvard College; a curious start to an acting career. Back in those days Harvard was a pretty unlikely launching pad for an actor — Natalie Portman and Matt Damon had not yet come along. For the next 20 years, I kept my degree a closely guarded secret, as it never seemed to help when I was auditioning for a soap opera or a laxative commercial.

My second Harvard education began in 1989 when I was invited to join the Board of Overseers, a university governing board packed with senators, CEOs and college presidents. The invitation astonished and perplexed me. Me? An actor? On the Board?

By default, I was presumed to be the “arts” Overseer, so I proposed an ad-hoc committee on the arts. As no one had reason to vote against it, the committee was quickly voted into existence. In 1993, this new committee created Arts First, a springtime celebration of undergraduate arts activity that soon became my pride and joy.

The four-day festival in 1993 has since been replicated 15 times. Today, thousands of students prepare year-round to perform at Arts First, and thousands of people from outside the community pour onto campus to attend more than 200 art, dance, music, theater and film events, all within the sequestered halls of Harvard Yard.

The creation of Arts First was a lesson for me in the power of a simple idea. But the big lessons were yet to come.

In 1995, I had another bright idea — the Harvard Arts Medal, which is awarded to an alumnus who goes into the creative arts. The award has been presented annually, 13 times in all, to such splendid artists as novelist John Updike, filmmaker Mira Nair, composer John Adams and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Every spring, one of the events planned around the presentation of the Arts Medal has been a question-and-answer session that I have conducted with the honoree for an audience of interested students. Although none of these honorees was an educator, all of them were dazzling, inspiring teachers. My moments with them have been the greatest adventures of all.

Many of these medal recipients had something in common. At the medal presentation, they each spoke about projects they had initiated that went beyond their primary expertise. Having achieved success in their respective fields, they had spotted problems or challenges to pursue in new, unexpected arenas.

I began to see that many of the qualities that made them great artists were also the same qualities that made them good people. It was through their words that I began formulating my simple lessons to live by: be CREATIVE, be USEFUL, be PRACTICAL and be GENEROUS.

Each award recipient was creative, but their actions were also imminently useful, practical and generous. For example, the 1996 medal recipient was the great folk singer Pete Seeger, who thrilled the students with his story of the sloop Clearwater.
One day in the mid-1960s, on a train ride to New York City from his upstate home, Seeger sat next to an acquaintance from the world of business and finance. Looking out the window at the Hudson River, Seeger daydreamed aloud about building a replica of one of the great sailing vessels that had carried goods along that route to and from the Erie Canal 150
years earlier.

Six months after that chance meeting, Seeger was astonished when the same acquaintance approached him on the same train and told him he had raised the money for Pete’s fanciful pipedream. Pete responded, “Well, I guess now we’re gonna have to build it.”

Within a few years, Seeger was sailing the Hudson River on the sloop Clearwater, giving concerts at cities and towns along the banks, taking children on historical field trips and raising people’s consciousness about the sad state of the polluted Hudson. Using the ship as a potent symbol, he lobbied the federal government on behalf of the Clean Water Act, which was passed in 1972 and remains one of the most successful environmental laws in history.

The following year the medal winner was Bonnie Raitt. At the height of her success, having sold millions of records and won a slew of Grammy awards, she was approached by Fender (Musical Instruments Corp.) with a very lucrative offer. They wanted to produce and sell a new model of autographed guitar, one suited to her particular style of blues playing.

She answered that she had no interest in making money off her own autograph. However, she agreed to their offer on one condition: that they use her share of the proceeds from the sale of this new guitar as seed money to fund guitar lessons for inner-city kids all across the country, facilitated by the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. The program was adopted and quickly spread to more than 200 venues.

Fourteen years have passed since Bonnie’s bright idea. Now known as the Boys & Girls Club Program for Music Education, it’s still going strong.

And the great stories abound: David Hays and the National Theater of the Deaf, Mira Nair and her film school in Uganda (Maisha), Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road project. These were — and still are — all marvelous, inspiring tales. But what was especially exciting about them was the fact that they were being told to college students just at the moment when they most needed to hear them. Most young people reach college with lofty, ambitious goals and a rooted sense of idealism and optimism. They need words of encouragement, support and hope.

But there’s something else they need to be told: that when you reach what you’re aiming for, and many of you will, think about what else you can do. The people I’ve described went beyond their original aspirations, sometimes in wildly unlikely ways. Think about how they made a difference in the world, and how much joy and pride they took in what they accomplished. Think about how they mingled art and commerce for the public good.

And then if you like, take the word art out of the equation, because you certainly don’t have to be an artist to follow their example. It’s sometimes a very simple thing to be CREATIVE, be USEFUL, be PRACTICAL and be GENEROUS.

This piece was adapted from a speech given by John Lithgow on Feb. 18, 2008, at the Clinton School.