Against Honesty

Livin La Vida Trickster

I saw five magpies fly north to south over my house as I was watering the weeds one evening shortly after solstice. They bound over the roof, alighting there briefly to regroup, then bounce on to the oak tree on the lane. I groove absentmindedly to Livin La Vida Loca by Ricky Martin as I watch them pass. Ricky and I parted in awkward circumstances but I still think that song is the sweetest he ever wrote about me. The wind changes as I reminisce. The magpies disappear into the darkling sky. 

Magpies are corvids. Big, intelligent birds with a sense of humour and a penchant for theft. No wonder they are thought, at least by me, to herald a manifestation of The Trickster.

The next day I find myself once again in defence of lying. It’s embarrassing. Who wants to stan bending the truth, exaggeration, inauthenticity? It’s a violation of both ancient and modern lore: thou shalt not bear false witness. To thine own self be true.

But I just can’t. And trust me, I really tried. My unspoken mantra throughout my twenties was, I must be right (factually correct) and good (morally impeccable). I attempted to make every choice based on these tenets. These high standards made me a smarter and, by any utilitarian measure, a better person. But they also made me miserable and they made my art suck.

Now when I work as a ritualist I light a candle inscribed with the Jung quote, I’d rather be whole than good. That’s my new commitment. I’m shooting for wholeness over being right or good–which includes outrageous unfounded assertions, whimsy and ill-advised jokes, and requires trust and surrender. Trust that people will allow me space to experiment and surrender to the fact that I will always be misunderstood.

That candle was burning in the background as I spoke with some friends about culture creation. As soon as someone brought up honesty I started to feel itchy inside. I tried to jump in a couple of times and eventually I let rip with my pro-deceit agenda. 

It goes something like this: art is woven out of lies or at least untruths. If you insist on literal representation of facts you will extinguish art. Our lives are artworks that we construct as we live them. To do this we need to be able to reach beyond the limits of reality–which we can’t, if we are hobbled by absolute honesty. 

I’m not mollified by the compromise of lies for art’s sake or personal truth. I don’t consider myself entitled to falsity because I can draw. Everyone is an artist. And my seeming lies aren't in fact my truth because the ‘me’ in question is insolubly mysterious. How on earth could I know what she thinks about anything? I’m a crazy jumble of impulses and contradictions–I contain multitudes–and if I ever found out what my truth was I bet it’d be at least fifty percent bullshit.

Myself is always shifting. Sentences I start in good faith end in deceit. Sometimes I speculate wildly without performing the required ablutive caveats. Sometimes I create a new reality through utterance. And I’m beginning to resent people who would deny me this creative potential.

The magpies stir up my inner Trickster. The Trickster isn’t just a liar:  in his Greek guise as Hermes, he invented lying. He’s a troublemaker, a shit-stirrer, an agent of chaos, and he’s present in all mythologies because he initiates growth. So, if that’s what you need, to be disrupted to stimulate neurogenesis, or perhaps to create a space in your psyche for the sacred… get thee to a crossroads.

And maybe it goes without saying, but if you already have enough Trickster in your life don’t enact this ritual. That’d be silly.

The Ritual

First, space must be made. A crack must be opened in the membrane of your soul so that The Trickster can flow in like quicksilver. So, violate an identity label you have pinned to your breast, something you use to formulate your Self. Kiss a girl. Tell a lie (perhaps about Ricky Martin). Eat ice cream. Pray. Do something that you just don’t do. 

Then, voyage to the limen. The Trickster is a constellation of behaviours, ideas and myth but conveniently there’s a physical address. Go there. Walk to the right crossroads, arrive at dusk. If you don’t know which one is the right one, keep walking until you do.

Upon arrival get present then say something like:

Great Mother Trickster,

behind the red door.

Your Will is The Way.

I plead to serve you,

Without compromise,

without expectation.

Teach me to lie well.

And make an offering. In my experience she likes evidence of personal sacrifice and dick jokes. So your ponytail or a phallic object would be appropriate. Lay it down with reverence.

Then dance. Stamp. Yell. Be ridiculous in some way that will bring you to her notice.

Finally, return home. The first decision you make upon returning should be surrendered to chance.

If you are lucky enough to attract her attention then don’t resist the nudges and impulses that will arise. Look out for odd coincidences and make a note of them. Let the dice roll and the coin flip. Enjoy the ride, but remember to disembark before it gets too crazy.

When it does get too crazy, go back to the crossroads, express gratitude for the disruption and leave your die or coin there to symbolise your renunciation of the chaotic path… for now

I salute magpies when I see them. I count them. If I see one alone I ask him, where’s your wife? I don’t know where I picked up these folkloric habits but I recognise them as a form of mythic engagement with my environment. We are telling a story together… and like all stories it’s woven of lies.

I’ll lay my ontological cards on the table. Most days I don’t think there is any objective meaning in the world. But I know I need meaning, so how do I live? With this one simple trick: I live a lie. And if I live it with enough verve and commitment it becomes true. Just like my idea for a sculpture becomes real when I pick up the clay. I, like all humans, am capable of giving my heart to something (credere) without knowing it to be true (pistis). Just ask my husband. 

If we are in a meaning crisis then perhaps one of the progenitors is this fetish for (and belief in) capital T Truth. That it’s out there, that it can be fully apprehended and will, once embraced, redeem us from confusion and despair. Instead of cultivating seeds of meaning we keep searching for the Holy T. Instead of embroidering, sculpting and beckoning a small-tee truth into existence we are discarding or destroying anything that falls short of the absolute ideal.

Honesty sounds delightful, but it’s founded on those T-assumptions and those T-assumptions lead to stagnancy, nihilism and despair. Its proponents claim bravery but for me real courage was needed to step out of truth and into the fantastic.

And of course it is fantastic to personify this abstract formulation of traits and tendencies. To give it a name, a gender and bird feet… but we humans interface best with faces. Which is why The Trickster has so many, across time and across cultures. Consider personification a tool for evocation or invocation, the offerings, poetry and ecstatic movement a signal, a stake or perhaps a sacrifice. 

We are adept at personification because it’s a self-perpetuating project we all are constantly involved in. Trickster Makes the World is the titular claim of Lewis Hyde’s iconic devotional text. He’s right. But we are all little worlds unto ourselves and so Trickster makes us too. The first lie we tell upon stepping through Lacan’s looking glass is the lie of self.

But at least it’s our lie. The warp and weft of our identity is prime real estate and there are powerful interests determined to create the ideal consumer-citizen. Disrupting your sense of self with an inauthentic performance–what if I behave like an extrovert today? Like a tourist? Like someone who believes in something, anything?–is stimulation for growth. Growth on your own terms. 

We need to learn to lie well. For fun. For recreation. For our own sanity. Because not lying at all isn’t an option and total deceit will ruin your life. The lies The Trickster champions are not aimed at concealment or conciliation but revelation and creation. White lies get stuck in her craw.

I think that’s what I’m doing with the magpies. Lying well. I’m picking up threads of folklore and weaving my own story. A co-creation between the myths, the magpies, Ricky and me. We are conspirators in creating a world where birds bring spores from some archetypal realm and drop them like shiny trinkets before a woman in her garden listening to a 90’s pop classic for the first time in twenty three years. At dusk. She picks them up and is possessed.

I’m writing my own myth and living it. I invite you to do the same because if you don’t someone else will.