I spent several evenings last week eavesdropping and bantering with a delightfully diverse and brilliant group of writers of poetry, fiction and the arguably indefinable genre of creative non-fiction.  There were readings by many of these talented authors and a final conversation, (bordering on argument), on the level and responsibility of truthfulness in writing.  In my musical, and certainly my theatrical work, I insist on, (to various degrees of satisfaction), being convinced of the sincerity of a singer’s lyrical delivery and a player’s approach to note and phrasing.  It often occurs to me that the criteria for the level of honesty I’m seeking have their roots and boundaries wholly formed by my personal perception.  And…there’s the rub.  Personally, I didn’t care how many make-believe cups of tea Mortenson drank when he was pretending to relate his actual adventures in Central Asia or if Frey’s million little pieces were reassembled from whole or imaginary cloth.  I subscribe to the synergy between receptee and receptor being one of near equal footing.  I perceive the artist’s stroke of cobalt blue, a well-tempered C-Major chord and a thoughtfully crafted sentence within the scope of my education, lore, bias and physical, emotional and intellectual limitations.  The veracity, intended or implied by the creator, is merely a starting point to which I instantly apply these conventions, and that, for better or worse, is my truth.  I have found fundamental truth in works of pure fiction and whatever the opposite of that may be, in supposed works of scholarly research.  I, as most of us do, have set many degrees of my moral compass based on lessons learned from fictitious characters or mystical wisdom.  I have long ago accepted the difference between the undefinitively truthful and the big fat lie.  The contrary, (epidemic in modern day political and religious rhetoric), is the embrace of the big fat lie in total disregard of empirical certainty.  How does one even begin to approach the voracious denial of fact in a growing and nearly equal reader base, (I’m using every bit of restraint to keep from saying something snide about what, if anything, these morons might be reading), without simply discounting their existence in the literary gene pool?  And yet, their reality, even if unsubstantiated by any intellectual standard, is their truth.

I may need to think some more on all of this.  Perhaps I’ll try to find a beautifully soothing Thomas Kinkade print at Walmart, put some Yanni on the stereo and dive into an easy-to-medium word-search puzzle with the word “truth” artfully hidden along a reverse diagonal.  Yeah…that ought to do it.