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Lone
Wolf
Howl:
TRUTH
BE
TOLD
(OR
NOT)
(Originally
published
in
Calgary
Country: February 2004)
Never spoil a good story with the truth. Oscar Wilde gave this advice to the world well over a century ago and it's worth repeating. It's worth repeating because the world, specifically the news of the world, is drowning in a flood of facts. Information is available to us at any time, easily accessed with the pads of our fingers. Whenever we feel a fix coming on, we can get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help us, God. Walter Benjamin held the view that information was the enemy of story. "The art of storytelling", he said, "is nearing its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out." He wrote that in 1936. If it was already dying out then, surely it must be a rotting corpse today. The side of truth that most of us understand exists as a straight line. We call it the bottom line. Two plus two equals four. That's the answer, the bottom line. No discussion. But four is equal to more than two plus two. It is the age of my daughter in April, the number of quarters in a football game, how many scoops of ice cream you can eat on a hot July afternoon at MacKay's. Plenty of discussion. A good story bends that straight line. The great stories of the world - the myths and legends that religions and civilizations are built upon - bend the line of truth to the point of exaltation. For thousands of generations, all over the world, storytellers were our only teachers, stories the only curriculum. The yearning to have a good story told to us is imbedded into our psyches, buried beneath the coats of a thousand and one parties. But it's still there. The more we share our stories, the more we hunger for them. And we hunger for them to be told to us, not at us. Television, on its best behaviour, tells stories at us. People tell them to us. Movies tell them at us. Theatre, dance, live music tell them to us. The news at us. Children to us. At/to. Think of a baseball. Throw it at someone, you're out of the game. Throw it to someone, you're playing the game. Little words. Big difference. When a three year old tells a story to us, we marvel at his imaginative powers. When a fifteen year old tells a story to us, we tell her to stop complaining. When a thirty-five year old tells a story to us, we balk at the ticket price. But we need these stories like plants need water. And whether they come from the toddler, the teen, or the artist; whether they're spontaneous or formalized; taking place at the Dairy Queen or the theatre; they all have one thing in common: wisdom. The epic side of truth is being passed on in all directions; up, down, and across. So go on… ask for a story to be told to you. Tell a couple yourself. Tell your story. Tell any story. Just don't spoil it with the truth. Back to Resources Page |