Let’s talk about lies.
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible. J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.
Lying is news. Lies versus Science. Lies versus Nature. Lies versus democracy.
Who do we turn to for the truth? God? the Dalai Lama? Dr. Fauci? My mother?
Lying is not new. We seem to have been making up lies from time immemorial - all the way back to the dinosaurs. “I killed the biggest mastodon in the world,” Jontu said. Shocked, Tody said, “Really? That Neanderthal lady over there said she killed the biggest mastodon.” “No way! My mastie was bigger than hers,” Jontu protested. And then Jontu ran over and hit the lady on the head with his big stick.
Do you think other animals lie? Or do humans have a corner on falsehoods.
Oscar Wilde, my favorite Irish humorist, wrote a whole essay on lying.
“Facts are not merely finding a footing-place in history, but they are usurping the domain of Fancy, and have invaded the kingdom of Romance. Their chilling touch is over everything. They are vulgarizing mankind. The crude commercialism of America, its materializing spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man, who according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.” (Oscar Wilde. The Decay of Lying. 1905.)
Well, Oscar Wilde needn’t worry. Some politicians find that truth is just an inconvenience. Who votes for an honest man, anyway?
Ah, I get distracted. I was going to talk about art, lies, and the self portrait.
I hate making self portraits. I want to be thinner. And have long red hair, a svelte body, long legs, and great clothes.
When I make a selfie or paint my picture, I have to redesign my smile. I don’t know what happened to my cute smile. It may have been the last to go. First, the great hair. Then the slim body. Then the smile. It’s hard work to recreate that devastatingly adorable smile I once had.
I still have great legs, though. Maybe I should just make a self portrait of my legs. Or, my tennis shoes.