Art is the lie that tells the truth

Earlier this evening I listened to a recording of Howard Zinn’s talk ‘The Artist in a Time of War.’  He was speaking not long after September 11 and before the Iraq War had started.  Zinn heard the drumbeats, and urged artists to use their gifts to raise the difficult questions, such as ‘Why do we have to bomb?’ ‘Why do we have to send troops?’  Were he alive now, I believe he would raise questions that would fill pages. Would he even recognize the government we now have?

Zinn spoke of ‘transcendence,’ the ability of artists to see beyond the immediate; to see life from outside the boundaries, to look beyond the accepted wisdom.  In a world where everyone is defined by the job that they do, we are brainwashed into believing that those in government are the only ones with the ‘expertise’ to have opinions on the ‘big questions.’ Each one of us, by virtue of being alive, living in this time and place, has as much right and as much responsibility to ask the questions, to discuss, to debate, to hold opinions.  No one has the profession of citizen.  We all have the identity of citizen.

Paraphrasing Zinn, where journalists and other non-fiction writers endure public ostracizing if they ask these questions openly and publicly, the artist can through metaphor, fiction, acting, visual, musical and dimensional forms raise the questions obliquely.  Picasso said that ‘Art is the lie that tells the truth.’ In my own opinion, using art in this way also allows the audience to absorb the truth in their own time and in a way that does not crush them.  Once they have revealed it to themselves, they can determine their own roles and actions in facing that truth.

There are many ugly events before us now.  While it is tempting to cocoon ourselves and hope another election will free us from this madness, a review of the past 16 years will show how vain and hollow that hope is.  If you are an artist, I urge you to employ your gifts for beauty, for joy, for solace, but also to stretch them to tell the heartbreaking truths.

I Say Unto You

One day in the National Mall

there will stand a Camp

of chained link fence and razor wire,

where punishments fit the crimes

and the history of White America.

Those who embrace a code of justice

will be answerable to it.

The tick of the flick of a whip.

The tock of a rock hitting fence.

The cycle of privilege will fall to its knees,

where every person of color is armed

every woman voice-ful, every child protected.

Where courts are well-versed in faith-based law,

justice is meted out by the victims and

those capable of answering violence with violence.

Is cruelty all that the cruel understand?

For those that terrorize children

we will not spare the rod.

Every child torn from parents,

who entered a pristine white tent

or huddled in a kennel

and was never seen again

will be remembered.

The tick of the drip of the rain.

The tock of the stomp of their feet.

The Sentenced stand in pillory

while the curious and wronged circle

and gawk at their shaved heads and torn silk suits,

their arms and legs tattooed with the Names.

Above the Guilty a marquee reads

‘Suffer the little children to forgive us.’

Do the shameful respond only to shaming?

The child in me is growing older,

for my ability to forgive and forget is fading

and the clock is ticking.