ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Time to See the Arts as a Birthright : What’s on stage is not mere entertainment but a definition of who we are as a people and part of the fabric of our lives.

Musicians and other artists in the county must surely have found the Oct. 2 Orange County Calendar section of The Times depressing reading. In that single edition were several stories underscoring that it will always be a tough go to make it in a social climate that is either indifferent or prohibitive to the artist.

On the front page, one could read about the Mozart Camerata offering 50% discounts to subscribers of the financially strapped Orange County Chamber Orchestra, which had recently been forced to cancel half of its 1991-92 season because of a lack of money.

Two pages later, classical guitarist Eliot Fisk was bemoaning the severely limited opportunities for young musicians, while asserting that music festivals routinely are expendable.

The perception that the arts are for the rich has persisted here. In spite of the best efforts of many artistic organizations to reach into all communities, an evening at, say, the Performing Arts Center is still seen by many to be an unobtainable luxury. And high ticket prices--the result of, again, prohibitive production costs and a lack of money--reinforces this.

Another form of elitism may be just as damaging: the designation regional arts organization. Carl St. Clair, the conductor of the Pacific Symphony--which has rapidly taken its place as one of the finest orchestras in the nation--expressed contempt for the regional label at a recent rehearsal.

That it implies second-rate status is obvious. Less apparent, however, is this: It offers further temptation to ignore the county-based groups, both fiscally and at the box office, in favor of the high-ticket arts organizations based elsewhere that are routinely booked, in particular, at the Performing Arts Center.

Finally, one look at audiences at almost any artistic production will reveal gray hairs. Young faces are few, and getting fewer. Organizations such as the Orange County Philharmonic Society work consistently to demystify the arts for students through school visits and special concerts and other events, but when school arts programs are routinely scrapped when budget time arrives, yet another class of potential arts patrons is lost. In a few short years, this may mean the end of even the finest artistic groups.

Solutions to these crises will involve nothing less than a fundamental change in the way many of us perceive the arts in relation to our lives and our society. It will mean an acknowledgement that the arts are not a luxury, but a birthright.

The arts are not mere entertainment but a definition of who we are as a people, as much a part of the fabric of our lives as the food we eat and the laws we obey.

Cherish and nurture the arts and they enrich and ennoble us. Ignore them and a part of our spirit, as a nation and as individuals, dies.