Don't Lie
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Transcript:
Tons of people lie; they lie all the time. That makes the Truth rare. And rare things, are valuable.
There’s a book I like, I’ve mentioned it before, it’s called WonderWorks by Angus Fletcher. He talks about how various inventions or tools in literature affect us: psychologically, emotionally.
Chapter 2 is called Rekindle the Romance: Sappho’s Lyrics, the Odes of Eastern Zhou, and the Invention of the Secret Discloser
He talks about the invention in literature of the poetic voice of “I.”
This invention involved two things:
1. Self Disclosure - you share details about you (particularly hidden things about you - stuff you don’t ordinarily confess - things that make you feel goofy/awkward/embarrassed. Treasured memories. Private hopes, fears, mistakes.)
2. You combine that self-disclosure with wonder. With a feeling of awe, or specialness. You make it poetic. You don’t just tell someone you have a crush on them. You tell them that your love is like the moon or whatever. Without that poetic element, self-disclosure can be less enticing, more off-putting. It can fill us with unwanted personal details about the person, that make us uncomfortable. “This is weird, where’s this coming from?” If someone tells you something overly personal and you don’t feel close to them, you might get anxious. Epinephrine fires up inside you, you feel like running away.
However, if along with your anxiety-inducing self-disclosure you can mix in some poetic language that primes the dopamine circuits of the person you’re confessing to - you’ve sweetened that anxious state. All the sudden they’re associating those anxious butterflies with something that’s kind of nice, even pleasant.
If it’s pleasant enough, then the person being wooed by this self-disclosing poetry might even self-disclose back. They might admit to having feelings that they were hiding. They might be comfortable enough to be vulnerable and even share something back with you, the illustrious poet. Now the two of you are feeling even closer together. Dopamine kicks up a little higher. Now it’s not just one person dumping their feelings on you. You get to dump your feelings back.
Intimate secrets can feel like powerful sources of love. And maybe it’s not love. Maybe more infatuation.
Maybe it’s ultimately egoistical - we just like the self-gratifying hit of being able to self-disclose - “I like myself, I feel better about myself, when I’m with you.”
Why am I talking about how romantic poetry functions in relation to comedy and lying?
Much of comedy these days functions in a similar way.
Comics, we go up on stage, and we share thoughts that aren’t exactly normal. They may be normal thoughts, but they aren’t thoughts you would normally express in public. They’re not typically outside thoughts. They’re inside, under the cover of night, a few beers deep, maybe some drugs floating around kind of thoughts.
Can self-disclosure be intimate when the secrets are being shouted into a microphone to a crowd, instead of whispered into the ear of a potential lover?
The comic, you self-disclose and then instead of poetry, you encapsulate the disclosure in a joke. And the joke, if it works, makes the audience laugh. That excites dopamine. You build tension in the room, and then you pop the bubble. Epinephrine. Dopamine. Epinephrine. Dopamine. You’re giving your thoughts, the audience is self-disclosing back in a way when they laugh - it’s a spontaneous self disclosure; it’s not articulated, but they won’t laugh if what you’re saying isn’t resonating with them emotionally. It’s a form of reciprocation
But how do you move beyond infatuation? Is there a deeper place you can go with the art form?
Because, romantic poetry doesn’t tell the whole story of love. That’s not love. It’s infatuation, romance. It inspires wonder and awe. These big feelings. But, those big feelings don’t reflect everyday reality. They don’t reflect real love. The mundane, dutiful aspects of love. The simpler side of it. That doesn’t show up.
And the best art, I think, has to reflect reality. It has to capture as much as it can. It shouldn’t leave things out. It’s always a distortion of reality, but even when you’re distorting it, if you’re careful, you can still reflect back something authentic. You can still tell the truth through the distorted lens.
That’s the thing, the essential thing is to not lie. You don’t want to write poetry that sounds beautiful but isn’t true. That’s kinda worthless because it’s misleading. You hear people talk about how Disney movies messed them up as kids - distorted our ideas of how life works with these fairy tales. Angus Fletcher actually talks about the fairy tale twist as a literary invention in Chapter 7 of WonderWorks, if ya wanna check that out. Fairy tales can induce positive feelings, but that needs to be balanced out. Life isn’t all roses and butterflies.
I have a Google Doc full of comedy advice to myself that I read through from time to time, one of the notes is: “Tell the truth. Do NOT lie with your art.”
I watched this documentary about Patrice O’Neal, very funny comedian. Very committed to being exactly who he was on stage. The documentary is called Killing is Easy. And he says something along the lines of, once you understand comedy, killing is easy, but can you do it without lying?
That’s a higher bar.
You’re not just doing a party trick at that point. You have to say something real. The self-disclosure has to be authentic.
What’s the emotional Truth? Are you willing to share that or are you just hiding behind a bunch of words arranged in the right order and said with the appropriate well-timed inflection?
You can pull laughs out of the audience with the party trick once you know the mechanics, but there’s a place you can go beyond that as an artist if you’re willing to.
And it’s ultimately more respectful of the audience I think. To be your real self. It takes more confidence. You’re going to fail more. Some people are not going to like you, at all. They might even hate you’re freakin’ guts.
But it’s more useful. It’s more valuable for everyone. It’s going to result in art that more accurately reflects reality, instead of a heightened, candied over, glossy version of it.
It’s not going to be a lie.
I heard a funny saying once, “If they crucified Jesus Christ, there’s gonna be some people that don’t like you.” Whether you’re religious or not, that’s kind of hilarious. If people didn’t like the literary archetype of perfection that was the Biblical Jesus, yea, some people aren’t gonna appreciate the authentic you - whatever dumb crap you decide to do with your life. Just accept that. Tell the Truth. Let the people who like you like you. Haters gonna hate. That’s all perfectly fine. It’s actually good, and healthy.