ARTS AT LARGE / JACK MATHEWS : Egg Hunts in Oz Ignore S.D. Roots

Shortly after Mayor Maureen O’Connor and her retinue of San Diego arts leaders returned from their Faberge egg hunt in the Soviet Union, a local TV station began running a series of promos hyping its upcoming series on the trip. At one point in the promo, there was a tight shot of the mayor, from a low angle, staring up and around at what appeared to be the ceiling of an immense cathedral.

There was no explanation of what the mayor was looking at, but the first time I saw the promo, the image of the mayor seemed to write its own caption: “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

I think it’s time for all of us to click our heels three times and see if we can’t bring the mayor home. If not to Kansas, or to San Diego, at least back to Earth. All her talk about a major three-week Soviet Arts Festival in San Diego was fun for a while, and her, “We’re off to see the wizard” arts junket had a real gee-whiz charm. Go ahead, Mo, we chuckled, shop till you drop.

But when she came back with an order of icons and eggs, a puppet show and a performance of a Modest Mussorgsky opera and declared that the festival would have the same economic impact on San Diego as the Super Bowl, that it would deliver us from “an also-ran city to a cultural power,” it was time to look closely into her eyes and wonder what the Russians had done to her over there.

Maybe one of those two Russian officials she sat with a year ago during a Bolshoi Symphony in Edinburgh, Scotland, slipped her a cultural mickey. As the story goes, the mayor was listening to the music when she was struck by the same thought that occurred to Mickey Rooney in all those Busby Berkeley movies: “I’ve got it! Let’s put on a show!”

The mayor recalled her brainstorm in an interview with The Times’ Hilliard Harper last January: “If they can put together this kind of talent--and not only the Soviets, but they had it from other parts of Europe as well--why can’t we do this in San Diego?”

She said she asked the two Soviets what they thought of a San Diego Soviet Arts Festival and they said it sounded splendid.

We don’t know if the Russians were slapping their thighs and wiping away tears in the men’s room 10 minutes later, but it’s pretty clear that neither one explained to O’Connor that one of the reasons why Edinburgh might do better drawing European performers and crowds than San Diego is because Edinburgh is in Europe. Russia is right next door. The cultural roots of Europeans and Soviets run deep, and they overlap.

They could have suggested to her that she consider a Latino festival of some sort, that she follow the example of Edinburgh and work closer to home. But no, she left with her mind set on launching a Soviet arts festival in San Diego and using it as the symbol of her commitment to the arts.

In a commentary published in the San Diego Union, the mayor set out the many reasons she sees that San Diego “needs” her proposed festival. It will bring in tourism dollars, she said, enhance the city’s image as a “player on the international arts scene,” inspire our children to greater things and give those of us who can’t make the trip on official city business a chance to get at least a peek of the culture of the Soviet Union.

But what if the thing flops? What if nobody comes? What if most San Diegans resist the opportunity to enrich themselves culturally, as they occasionally do, and continue to watch the sun set over the back-yard barbecue?

It has been mentioned that the festival would include a performance of Soviet jazz. Good luck. If Dizzy Gillespie, one of the greatest performers in jazz history, can sell only 1,000 tickets to a concert here, as he did last month, the festival organizers will be wise to find a small room for the Tbilisi Quartet.

The only vocal opposition to the mayor’s Soviet arts scheme so far has come from the badnewsniks who regard glasnost and peristroika as new forms of Soviet propaganda and don’t want us collaborating with them under any circumstances.

In a letter to the editor published in The Times, O’Connor said she sympathized with those points of view, but “the larger part of me . . . opted for a higher vision of our civic duty--a responsibility to at least try to preserve a grander, more noble vision of human nature than the opposing side has espoused.”

The mayor has expanded on her early vision of the Soviet festival as a way of elevating San Diego’s reputation as an arts city. She now says she dreams of it as being a “little step towards peace, a small movement toward common understanding and a fragile hope for a less hostile future.” More important than the money it figures to earn, she says, is the “step we might be taking toward breaking a cycle of hate.”

Talk about being a few years late and a few billion dollars short. The floodgates to a U.S.-Soviet cultural exchange have long been opened. Their arts delegations have swarmed our city halls and museums; ours have swarmed theirs. They’ve sent the Bolshoi; we’ve sent Billy Joel. (Who says we’re not wily traders?)

A few voices in the arts community have quietly suggested other possibilities for an arts festival in San Diego. Perhaps, one that might make sense to San Diegans. If the eggs and icons and the rest of the Soviet lineup don’t draw the Super Bowl crowds the mayor envisions, the festival will be hard-pressed to cover its costs from local participation.

There has been talk of a Pacific Rim Festival, drawing from the large inventory of arts and culture of countries looping the Pacific. San Diego is on the rim. So are Mexico and Latin America, whose cultural roots tangle with our own.

Or, how about hosting that Latino Festival the Russians forgot to mention to the mayor? Better yet, an Hispanic Festival. The finest art from Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Latin America and South America. The best performance artists. Exhibits of folk music, dance and art. What a film series you could have!

Anyone who has ever been in a Hispanic country during a fiesta knows what it is to have a good time. Imagine a festival that combines the arts and cultures of all these countries and shows them off in one place!

The advantages of a Hispanic festival over a Russian one are pretty obvious. We have a population base of Hispanics and Hispanic descendants--not just in San Diego, but throughout the Southwest and Mexico--the city is rooted in Mexican history, and we would not have to compete with Seattle and the Smithsonian Institution, a concern the mayor brings up now and then.

If O’Connor really does dream of a better world, of making a small movement toward common understanding, she could do a lot better than making San Diego the host of an arts festival that will depend on outsiders for its success.

As that movie character she resembles so closely put it: “There’s no place like home.”