Truth Telling and Art

Hope Gangloff

The relation of art to life is of the first importance especially in a skeptical age since, in the absence of a belief in God, the mind turns to its own creations and examines them, not alone from the aesthetic point of view, but for what they reveal, for what they validate and invalidate, for the support that they give.

— Wallace Stevens

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On Memorial Day morning Joseph walked out to the granary to check the harness he had packed in oil back in January. He remembered wiping the oil off his hands before he reached for Catherine in her absurdly diaphanous blue underthings. Part of the harness had come back with the oil treatment and appeared salvageable. His mind kept turning to the fact that after lunch he would have to pick some daisies and lilacs and visit the graves. It would be a hurried visit because he didn’t want to talk to the people who generally spent the afternoon of Memorial Day walking around in hushed silence reminiscing in whispers about the lives of the dead. After he had cleaned the excess oil from the harness he lathered it with saddle soap, wiped away the foam, and hung the harness from spikes. The collars had proved too moldy to recover. He had sold Tom and Butch for a thousand dollars the month after his father died; many thought Joseph had been cheated but in grief he had wanted the horses off the farm. When the truck came and he loaded the team for the buyer he was unable to talk. The man noticed his discomfort and walked over to the fence pretending to look at the corn. Joseph spent a few moments pressing his face to each neck then moved quickly off the truck and walked to the house.

— Jim Harrison

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Making good art has a lot to do with telling the truth, which in a strange way is connected to our courage to be ourselves. The quality of mind that lives undefended from all our human contradictions and vulnerabilities, that looks things in the face, can perceive the passing and living details of life and speak the simple truth about them. The mind that hides from itself is too preoccupied with its act to accomplish that. Proposing a fictitious self to the world keeps a person from noticing anything outside the story they want you to believe.