Lying Like the Trickster

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.

Photo and words: Maureen Fitzmahan
Maureen is a founding member of the Art Junket (2015-2022).

Taska Sanford - Trickster and Coyote

Taska Sanford

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. - Mark Twain.

I think we are all searching for Hosteen Coyote. This elusive spirit will bring us fire and knowledge. It will laugh in our faces until we laugh back. Coyote holds up the mirror so we can see our true nature for the first time.

Taska Sanford.

I can not say for sure that my dad was always fascinated by the trickster for the same reasons that I am. Even when my father was not an old man he referred to himself as Holsteen Coyote.

When my mom moved to California to live with us after he died, we found letters from me he had saved over the years. I wrote to him and my mom often during my years in college so far from home. My letters were more often than not addressed to Hosteen Coyote. 

Coyote is by no means the only trickster in our collective consciousness. Coyote has many guises that run the gamut from silly, to self-reflective, to sexually deviant. That is quite a spread for one entity, but not unbelievable. 

Our family had a little adobe tucked in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico. It was a magical place that certainly housed many spirits and beings even when buttoned up for the long harsh desert winter. Our family spent summers there wandering the desert with a collective urge of searching. We were always searching with eyes, ears, tongue, nose, fingers, and spirit. We voraciously read about the Navajo, Tewa, and Zuni. About cowboys, saints, and artists. Anyone who stopped just for a moment to breathe in this high desert-scape also felt that deep drive to search. 

I think we are all searching for Hosteen Coyote. This elusive spirit will bring us fire and knowledge. It will laugh in our faces until we laugh back. Coyote holds up the mirror so we can see our true nature for the first time. We can even follow coyote back to the den, if we dare, for more tempting secrets.  And like the desert itself, coyote is not always fun and carefree. Life lessons come with a cost. Sometimes we overlook the consequences of our thirst for more. Never underestimate coyote and never underestimate the desert. They are both more powerful than we are. And we humans need things that are bigger than ourselves. 

When I look up to the galaxy cluster in the deep night and hear the yips of the coyote pups I know my place in the world again. Hosteen Coyote - father, trickster, and desert embodied pads through my heart and sends me to sleep body and spirit sated.

Photo and words: Taska Sanford

Taska Sanford is a member of the Art Junket in Berkeley, California (2018-2022)

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Breaking Rules in Art

Man Ray, Woman with Long Hair. 1929

Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Neil Gaiman

Pablo Picasso. Leaning Harlequin, 1901. Metropolitan Museum, New York. This painting marks the beginning of Picasso’s blue period. It is believed that Picasso painted this sad clown upon learning of the death of a good friend.

Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky). Sleeping Woman (solarization). 1929. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Man Ray was born in America from immigrant Jewish parents. He moved to Paris in the 20s and was not bound by one art medium, but experimented in photography, film, painting, and sculpture.

Graciela Iturbide. Mujer angel. Desierto de Sonora. 1979. Museum of Modern Art, New York. ‘The Angel Woman is moving gracefully between different worlds. Crossing the desert on foot while listening to recorded music, she combines old ways with modern ones. And like an angel, this Seri Indian woman seems to hover between ground and sky, heaven and earth.’

Definition

In mythology and the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story (god, goddess, spirit, human) who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and defy conventional behavior. (Wikipedia)

Artists as Tricksters

As I looked for the trickster in art, I see that art is about ‘disobeying normal rules.’ In fact, art disobeys the most basic rules of life - it copies life and pretends that the copy is real.

Deborah Roberts. That’s Not Ladylike No.2. 2019. “The works of Deborah Roberts question the common understanding of ‘Ideal Beauty’. She sees her work as a social commentary, making room for women who are not included in the stereotypical imagery of the beautiful woman of fashion magazines. ..Her works answer the need to critically reconstruct our idea of Beauty and the authority of the Female Figure.” (Kooness)

Artists are either proud of disobeying rules or they defend art as a snapshot of life. Different genres of art arise out of this age old philosophical debate. Is art real? Or, of course, not. Art is art. And grass is grass. And I am me.

Picasso grappled with this concept by writing, “The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.”

WORDS: Maureen Fitzmahan
Maureen Fitzmahan (Tokyo, Japan) is a founding member of the Art Junket (2015-2022).