Trend-spotting - "The Truth"
I was watching comedian Dave Chapelle on "Inside the Actor's Studio", a Bravo Network TV interview show, and he closed the show by saying, "There's the Truth... everything else will fall away". I can dig it. But then I thought about how trendy "The Truth" is. Keepin' it Real. Ya gotta keep it real, right? "Reality" shows will not go away. Investigative reporting. Muckraking websites. Politics. Religion. Talking heads throwing around their sincerity with the big sell attitude of Madison Avenue. Documentary films were never more popular. Inquiring minds want to know. Who's really behind that conspiracy? Everyone shocked that that memoir was faked. Was that athlete taking drugs? The Truth is out there. Fox Mulder never found it, but dammit, it's important. Mr. Starr wants some transparency and he wants it now. Who's zoomin' who? No, really! The truth needs to come out. It's gonna make us all feel alot better. Penn and Teller have a show called "BullS**t". There was a best seller called "On BullS**t". I liked the book, thought it had some interesting things to say, and I'm as much into "The Truth" and what's real as the next guy. I'm just making an observation. The Truth is trendy. And this trendiness is making it invisible.
When one actually looks for the truth, one finds that it is murky, ill-defined, elusive, confusing, and complicated. "The Truth? You can't handle the Truth!" By attempting to bring it into focus, you lose it, very much the way physicists cannot fix the position of subatomic particles. Bummer? Not really. It is something to be celebrated. What's being currently lost in our culture is that the Truth can actually be found in the most fantastic places. Yes, that memoir should have had a bigger disclaimer. Bad boy! But the Truth was in there even more than if he had stuck more to the facts. Fiction brings the Truth to light quite well. Watch "The Sopranos". You'll get the whole wise guys thing in a nutshell, the truth splitting it open. When children play, the Truth is the last thing on their minds, yet what they pretend is more real than Court TV could ever dream to be. That tingle on your neck when a singer transfers a little magic to you just for a moment? There's the Truth. Read a good poem. Hell, write a good poem. Now you are getting closer. Don't fret that you can't fix its position or clearly define it. The Truth is out there. It's all around you. It's suffocating you, actually. Look for a crack and take a breath. And enjoy the pleasures of a trend somewhere else.
Oh yeah, Mr. Chapelle? Shortly before or after he spoke of the Truth, in almost the same sentence, he said, " I'm just a comedian, just looking for what's funny, just throwing it out there." That's more like it!
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Very well said! Lao Tzu: "The Tao that can be named is not the Tao."
A major part of the culture wars now is an assult on the academy's postmodern tendencies, on the idea of subjectivity versus objective truth. Contrary to the squares' assertions, the pomo's do not claim there is no objective truth, only that we can never know what it is!
When truth is trendy, jive is indeed king. It's never a true story, just based on one. Nothing is more unreal than a reality show. And out of the mouths of our enemies has come the concept of a reality-based community, as in they are in charge of what reality is going to be and we can only report on it after the fact. We can't handle the truth, but we certainly aren't afraid to manhandle it!
You are quite correct that art (artifice) is the best way at truth, if not the only way. Roger Miller wrote it in a song with Dwight Yokum: "I tell the truth some when I lie." In the preface to "Killing Mr. Watson," Peter Matthiessen hoped that his imaginings about the little-known outlaw "contains much more of the truth than the popularly accepted 'facts'..."
Notice how the term is "truth seeker" and never "truth finder"? The truth always seems to be out there and never in here. But in here is the only place it can be found, and like where we always find our lost keys, it is the last place we look.
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