The Agony and the Ecstasy of the Truth

Recently, news broke that Mike Daisey's report for TAL was partly falsified. So much response to that on all fronts. Well actually I don't think I had a real life conversation about it, but I saw multiple blog posts and articles (is the difference between an article and a blog post only who publishes it?) and tweets. All the sentiments can be mostly summed up in these two tweets of @KateHarding:
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19 Mar Kate Harding ‏ @KateHarding

A fiction writer's challenge is to tell a story that rings true. A nonfiction writer's is to make the best story out of what happened. (1/2)

19 Mar Kate Harding ‏ @KateHarding

Making shit up and calling it nonfiction rejects both challenges. It's about manipulating the audience, not creating art.

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(sorry, I don't feel like going through that whole Print Screen business right now)

So Daisey mostly told the truth about the conditions at Foxconn but was not true to facts* when discussing his meetings with Foxconn employees / injured people, notable the guy who swipes the iPad open and calls it "magic" or the people with the health damages from the dries-faster-than-alcohol cleaner. This is a problem because it's very easy to make up something that is compelling and it's much harder to find the compelling nugget in a fact-based story.
*by "facts" I mean THINGS THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED

For example, to hear that 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion is much more arresting than 3%. This figure makes you move, makes you shout WHAT and clammor for more information. Three percent is like, whatever, fine, that's what I expect I guess or something, who actually cares, PP does all kinds of health services. So when you learn it IS 3%, and that you'd been fed 90% for inflammatory purposes (Jon Kyl said he wasn't trying to be "factually accurate"), you never forget that it's 3%.

I guess what can be good about distortion--or any kind of aggrandized statement--is that distortion garners attention and press. Maybe Daisey would have better luck passing off his carelessness as determined misinformation to galvanize activists, or Apple, to take action.

A couple weeks ago the NYTimes Book Review published a front-page article on John D'Agata's twists of FACTS towards a shady aim: "beauty," that elusive beast. He claims that as an essayist, not a reporter, he doesn't have an obligation to tell "the truth." Hey, you know me; you know I'm a big believer in subjectivity, multiple truths, and conflicting realities. One would be naive to think we don't live in a world of multiple realities: look at the US Congress, can't barely do a thing, everyone thinking their reason is the best reason! My problem with D'Agata is that he's trying to change all these small bits of information to make a better story, and that's not good writing. That's not effort. That doesn't produce art. And the base things he's trying to change to make his story more compelling aren't even a big deal to begin with.

Daisey changed compelling facts in the name of truth. D'Agata changed uninteresting facts in the name of art. And there's nothing more to this post than that these manipulations are a recent coincidence I've been thinking about.

Dancers

Yesterday I heard about the dance performance called "The Trash Project" choreographed by Allison Orr.

The Trash Project- performance excerpts from Forklift Danceworks on Vimeo.

Julia, this is the epitome of what you mean when you say that anyone could be considered a "dancer." In case the video doesn't work, sanitation workers from the Austin area are the performers here, using actual garbage trucks and movements that go into the work of daily life. Is this too literal an interpretation of "dance as life"? That is a question for those more knowledgeable about dance, however, watching the clips remind me of how exciting and thrilling it is to see big utility vehicles as a young child.

Big Day March 9

March 9th, Friday, was a big day. Lots of coincidences. I could not believe it.

Start it off: "When I'm Gone"

Recently I began reading Just Kids by Patti Smith. The book is a chronicle of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe and their concurrent rise in the art world. When I first picked it up I read 65 pages without stopping. I completed the whole book in about a week, often reading at work while I scanned archival WWII documents or current valid photo IDs. I finished on March 9th, 24 years to day Robert died.

On the train on the way home I decided to listen to Horses. I must have taken it off my iPod because all that exists under P is Phil Ochs. On the Manhattan bridge my phone rang. I answered it--my sister--a family friend passed away--as soon as we hung up, Mom called from California. The train was moving slowly so I was able to take both calls. It is still March 9th. Two deaths on March 9th.

I put my headphones back in and it was Phil singing When I'm Gone, about who will do the political art/works when he's gone. It could have been any song as iPod was on Phil's "There But for Fortune" album shuffle. I kind of turned it off and sat stunned thinking about impermanence and the universe.

Later that night I went to see Laurie Anderson perform Delusions* (that's your cue--switch it up) at Pace University, downtown on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge. How can you describe music? Laurie's not just music, but video, video on screens and a couch, and tiny with spiky hair and a suitish outfit and sparkle shoes. And Fenway Bergamot also--every scary robot voice from any scary AI movie. *This is not the best recording but I found it the most resonant now, writing, and it has many segments of the performance.

Laurie mentioned the priest who helped her when her mother died. She went back to Chicago. The priest told her how to say goodbye to her mother--Laurie said she couldn't say she loved her; the priest told her to say she cared. Laurie said the priest was also Robert's priest. Robert's! The same Robert's! It was still March 9.

Durham maps

Le, I thought you'd love these! A whole trove of maps and other archival documents from Durham.

I found it through a Sociological Images post about segregated Durham in 1937.

Dad dharma

From Shambhala SunSpace blog post So Your Parents Are Crazy by Lodro Rinzler:

"In your meditation practice you can work with that heartbreak, dropping the storyline around the emotion and just resting with it. There are many other ways to explore your sadness or disappointment. For example, you can contemplate where it resides in your body. Is it that tightness in your throat? Is it a weighing down of your heart? Is that what disappointment looks like? Notice if you can pinpoint where it exists. If you see that it does not have a physical location then you may realize that this sadness is not as real and solid as you thought it was. It’s actually just another fluid emotional experience that will ebb and flow throughout your life, just like the waves in the ocean."

I don't necessarily think that my parents are crazy but it's true that they are difficult sometimes, and their idiosyncrasies make me laugh (or cry). (Or both.) Yesterday I went to Dad's house in anticipation of TAX SEASON and I taught him how to copy and paste links so he could email me all the tax booklets I need to print from the office. He was enthralled, especially with the "ctrl-click" technique to open a link in a new tab. He has this particular way of reading aloud, lopping off whatever part of the sentence he deems unnecessary or just skipping ahead to speak what his eye sees rather than what is next in the sentence. "An addition is required on the 2011 income tax Bonus depreciation and section 179 Faster processing with fewer errors Do not use red ink or pencil." I'm all like DAD YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY with this babble. Instead of interrupting him I breathe loudly. He slouches in the cheap rolly chair in a dimly-lit office space (there are literally three office spaces in his Tribeca loft) and I drink diet Dr. Brown's Cherry Cola. Dad's small linoleum desk is cluttered with papers, many packs of extralong Post-Its, erasable red pencils, green purple blue black pens. The computer loads .pdfs while he asks me when we'll see each other next, when I will print the forms, when we can get together to do my taxes and he can help my freelancing girlfriend file her twenty W2s. The walls hold framed photos of B.B. King, Billie Holiday, 1920s gang-busting police in Chicago, dogs playing poker. I love my dad. And he drives me crazy.

"You must attach Form IT-272 to your 2011 Form IT-201 Enter for each student listed on line A the lesser of $10,000 Do not complete Form IT-272 if you are claimed as a dependent..."

As I leave twenty minutes later, having rinsed my glass and watched him write out on an extralong Post-It how to ctrl-click, he decides to come downstairs with me and make some copies around the corner. On the stairs he literally grumbles "oooh" and "aahh" in response to his creaky knee and the warmer weather. I'm going to the R train by City Hall, he's heading west to Greenwich Ave. We say goodbye, a hug and kiss, and part ways. After ten feet he calls, "Let me know if you need any MetroCards!" I'm like DAD I get my own MetroCards! Let me get you MetroCards with my TransitChek discounts from the office. But he's about to be 65 and will soon get half-fare Cards; he doesn't need my Cheks.

In high school he micromanaged my academics, hiring math and science tutors from the first month of ninth grade. He insisted I use the hourlong train ride home to do homework instead of socialize with friends. I ferociously resisted this domination, refusing to see him and ultimately refusing to go to school. This assertion of my independence allowed our relationship to blossom as he saw me as an individual. I was going to control my life and make my own choices. When Dad understood that, our relationship became more adult; we developed respect for each other as discrete people with responsibility and choices outside of our biological connection. As I became less hotheaded I also understood that he was just ensuring that I had options for my future and thus the ability to be in control of my life.

I also understood that his desire to control me was related to the chaos in his own life--unlimited clutter and spread, hoarding of office supplies, the three office spaces--and where I once was impatient with his fanatic fact-checking, double-checking times and dates, printing multiples just in case, making sure the car was locked, obsession with SHARING arcane radio shows and minute music facts, I became compassionate. Of course he has become compassionate with me as well over the course of our relationship and now we are quite close. But when he does drive me crazy, or when I am sad thinking about him getting older, or when I am frustrated because he tries to reason his way out of an argument and negates my feelings of dismissal with rationalistic techniques, I remember our similar human qualities and unique biological bind. I focus out of my body and into light or cloudless sky. I just breathe for a minute and move on.

This post started out as a humourous rant of Dad's quirks but has become a(nother) record of our relationship, to be stored with the multicolored multifonted emails Dad sends me as remidners of an interesting law panel at his alma mater or his upcoming 65th birthday bash. I read Lodro Rinzler's Shambhala SunSpace post and thought, Yeah! I've got crazy parents! I thought his post would help me quell anger at my parents but I am instead discovering how to tame my manic love--future inevitable sadness--and transform it into compassionate unattachment.

Waterfalling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow

Language affects reality as reality shapes language. See also: "think outside the box"

Things that are the exact same color as other things Part 2

part one of same color things

Hiatus