On using the truth to speak lies, and lies to speak truths
Or: What do we owe the 'real' people and events that we turn into art?
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
It was the Romantic poets and philosophers who thought that creating beautiful things was the way to discover the ‘true’ fundamental nature of the universe. However, the Romantics also had quite a dramatic pessimism about the extent to which they (or anyone) would be able to achieve this goal. In other words: the Romantics thought that beauty was all that mattered, and we feeble humans would never truly access its mystery, but that the pursuit of truth through beauty was worthy and important. All else fell at the feet of this great sacrifice in search of beauty’s promised epiphany (For more, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Aesthetic Experience).
But if beauty is truth and truth is beauty, as Keats suggests, what does this imply when we use the ‘truth’ to inspire the creation of beauty? We don’t generally treat mere reportage of events as art. Truth is a slippery concept, and while we might hope to pursue it, the way the Romantics did, the way we create things is never objective. So what does this suggest about our ability to use ‘true’ people and events in our work? And what do we owe those ‘real’ people, if anything? Is it fair game to sacrifice truth at the altar of creating art - a justified means to an end?
The case for telling lies
If I had to choose between a poem being therapeutic and it being a better poem, I’d want it to be a better poem.
Sharon Olds in The Paris Review
In Roland Barthes’ essay on The World of Wrestling (in Mythologies), he says:
Wrestling is not a sport, it is a spectacle… The public is completely uninterested in knowing whether the contest is rigged or not, and rightly so; it abandons itself to the primary virtue of the spectacle, which is to abolish all motives and all consequences: what matters is not what it thinks but what it sees.
His point, I think, is encapsulated by the statement that what the public wants “is the image of passion, not passion itself.” The ‘real’ might pique our interest, but it isn’t completely relevant. In fact, distance is an essential component to most art-making - and to the potential of engaging with art, too, as there is the view that true art can be considered the expression of true emotions (see Collingwood, who went as far as to say that if the work is ‘good’ it is ‘true’ - its “artistic merit and its truth are the same thing”). But the very point is that we don’t want to experience the actual emotions, or see real pain endured (as in the case of wrestling). We want the simulation, the presentation and the spectacle of these true feelings.
In this distance lies potential for some true understanding without having lived the artist’s experience. As Stanley Cavell argued, the “hiddenness” of film, that is our inability to know exactly what drives a film, is analogous to our relations with all other people – though we may recognise the motifs of certain directors, it is difficult to say that a film is a representation of the ‘mind’ of the director, any more than it is the screenwriter, editor or producer. In the same way that we cannot find a ‘mind’ or inherent source of what a film is, we cannot recognise a mind in other people. But the presentation of true emotions gives us enough hope and enough scope to feel understood, intimate, and connected. Someone else is out there, and we know what it feels like to be them.
To go further on the point of ‘true emotions’, I think we all know that a big reason we draw on ‘real’ people and events is in pursuit of some sort of processing. As Collingwood suggested, the art is created not merely because the artist “can create it but because he must.” (See The Principles of Art). We want to grapple with something that has been difficult to parse in order to have art help us make sense of it. The ‘laying bare’ of such feelings is not just required (by some definitions) in creating art, but also is much of the appeal for those of us who agree to being that vulnerable in the first place. We hope this process will leave us somehow either vindicated, peaceful, or lightened. But how therapeutic is telling the truth?
I ask myself this question a lot. And while regaling true events as they occurred has rarely helped me process anything, drawing upon the real emotions does seem to shift things. But creation does not circumvent the need for bigger, more essential emotional unpacking, which is private, internal and individual. A fun side note about being a female writer is that, in many cases, it doesn’t matter how true or false your narrative is: you’re quite likely to be accused of drawing from the events of your own diary. This goes back to boring, misogynistic conceptions of the superior role of ‘imagination’ and what this entails, as well as a woman’s capacity for leveraging it. But I digress. All I can say is that, instead of regaling unsuspecting readers with true reporting, I tend to focus on how real things made me feel, the vibe or atmosphere of the real event, etc. I’ve always preferred expressionism over realism, in essence, and I’ve found that this lays a better foundation for grappling with tough subjects. This ‘truth’ is a primary concern of art, and while I might well draw upon my own diary in my work, you will never really know what ‘happened’. Only how I felt about it. And maybe not even that.
A note on art as revenge
Something I also think about often is the idea that you might ‘get back at’ or ‘show up’ the people who have wronged you through your work. This risk is generally what we are talking about when we’re talking about the ethics of using the truth. And this is entirely your decision - you could totally Michael Crichton it and name your bad reviewer (without trying to obscure their identity at all) and then adorn them with a tiny penis. It makes suing for libel pretty undesirable for the aggrieved, who will have to prove the accuracy of your description of them. This is the Small Penis Rule. I did not make this up.
However, I personally find it more rewarding to deliberately leave out the people who have wronged me. This is just my perspective, but I generally don’t want to give that person air time. It’s hard to say whether writing about someone I know is an act of love or devotion, or if it is a slight. I suppose that depends on what story I’m telling. But if there’s an unflattering portrait to draw, I usually don’t deign to draw on people I have hated. In fact, if I ‘hate’ them then I am probably not ready to write about them. Nobody is a cartoon villain. So let them be relegated to obscurity (for now). In the creative process, I spend rather a lot of time with the characters I write about; I don’t want to spend time with people who were both real and really shitty. Unpleasant characters that I’ve invented I can deal with. Ghosts, not so much.
Perhaps an exception will be using a particular phrase or line that someone has said to me - I like to recycle such lines, doling them out to different characters or weaving them into non-fiction writing, like these newsletters. I suppose the thing I find amusing is if someone ‘recognises’ themselves in the negative (though this really hasn’t happened very much - you’d be surprised how differently people see themselves), I’ve found that the reaction tends to be shock that you dared use their awfulness (even if you didn’t identify them) rather than remorse that they were shitty to you. Irony! The vindication you had hoped for - the long sought after apology or changing of ways - is likely to amount to very little. You are just as likely to entrench their position. In Melissa Febos’ very excellent Body Work, she says (of writing about other people):
The only predictable lesson I’ve gleaned is that when people are upset by what you’ve written about them, or even about yourself, they will respond as usual. If they tend to denial, rage, self-pity, withdrawal, or acceptance, then that is what you should expect. The act of writing a book is likely to change only one person: you.
I think this is probably a good warning before you set out to depict your ex as a whore who dies in childbirth, or gets a terrible venereal disease, a la Hemingway. I sure hope Hemingway processed his own feelings about it all, because I’m not sure anyone looks back now and thinks, “Well he sure got the best of her!” If anything, he’s fuelled a lot of discourse on the pettiness of the writer, and whether or not being a terrible person made him better or worse at his craft. All I can say for sure is that he’d probably be the first person appearing in one of my stories with a small dick if he’d gone out and written about me in that way. My own pettiness and taste for revenge might be stronger than my usually measured ‘two-things-can-be-true-at-once’ equilibrium. In short, I make no promises. Let that be a warning to all.
You own everything that happens to you.
To tell a story is to reconstruct the conditions of reality in order to manipulate or change them.
- Rachel Cusk in The Paris Review
All that has happened to you is yours. It’s just not fair that this experience - the one you have already endured - should be up for debate as to whether you have the ‘right’ to draw from it. You lived it. However, that does not mean that you should use this experience in your work. To return to Melissa Febos, she advises having open conversations with people you intend to write about (or create art about) and potentially even allowing the individual in question to read something before it hits the public domain. This is a generous position, I think, and one that speaks to a desire to maintain an existing relationship. I’m not sure these can apply, however, in the case of writing about a negative relationship with someone who you no longer engage with. You can’t anticipate a reaction, either - it is perfectly possible to lose people if you do them injury (or if they perceive an injury to have occurred). Again, to quote Febos: “I don’t expect publication to be free of personal and professional cost.”
So not all experiences need to be rendered on the page or in music or on the canvas or wherever. Firstly, not all experiences are worth it. Secondly, sometimes fact is simply stranger than fiction. What happened may not make a good story. And finally, art is not reportage. The very act of telling a story, as the Cusk quote suggests above, is an act of manipulation. You do not have access to objective memory. The more helpful question becomes: is what you feel true? This is a more difficult question than one might initially imagine. It both demands that you engage fully with the artistic process and suggests that nothing short of aiming for true art will bring the ‘real’ emotion out of you. ‘Using your diary’ as a pejorative becomes a very simple-minded statement that could only be uttered by someone who absolutely has not engaged with their own story in any real way.
So here’s the risk of knowing an artist: we might depict you (or someone very like you) in our art. And if you have a problem with the depiction? Often times, you can sue us. Or, you can write a book. Make your own painting. Film a movie. You have a right to reply, absolutely. There is risk to knowing the artist, and to the artist, there is also risk in searching for truth. Here’s one last Febos quote for the road: “So long as we don’t try to speak for each other, there is room in our house for more than one story.”