From The Big Lie

by Mark Wallace

In the basement of the art school where he was taking a sculpture class, Ben found himself staring at the words THE BIG LIE, which were looking up at him from some crumpled pieces of paper lying on the floor and smeared by dirt and paint. He picked up the papers, found that the words in large print were a title for a longer piece of writing. The print was xeroxed; the pages looked like some sort of cheaply-made personal advertisement. But there was no name or address, no way to know where they had come from Intrigued, Ben started reading the pages while he leaned against one of the hallway lockers. He had a few minutes to kill before class, but even if he hadn't, he probably would have kept reading, because the piece was weird: If you're an artist, or are thinking about becoming one, or know any, or ever read or watch or listen to or look at the works of any, you need to know about the BIG LIE. The artist's BIG LIE is almost as big, for artists, as other BIG LIES have been for people who were attacked by them, although it has been less directly violent. In many ways, the artist's BIG LIE works well for artists-- it can make them famous, get them lots of sex or money. It could work that way for you. On the other hand, it would also make you an asshole. Now, you may be unable to not be an asshole, but you might avoid being one this way. I don't care how good your art is; if you're an asshole I don't want you around, and I wish you'd get out of here so I could spend time with people I like. See, The BIG LIE has helped make too many artists into assholes for too long, it's made too much art into an excuse for assholes, which in turn feeds perfectly the purposes of the BIG LIE, which is to make art the same as politics, business, government, etc.-- BIG LIE excuses that let assholes go on being assholes. I'll tell you this much, and hope you'll agree-- I like art sometimes, but I never like assholes. For artists, the BIG LIE is simple. It goes like this: BECAUSE YOU'RE AN ARTIST, YOU'RE AN OUTSIDER. Now, as big lies go, it's mighty attractive, admittedly. But big lies always are-- if they didn't appeal to the parts of us that really suck, they wouldn't be big. It's a lie that makes you, the artist, a special person, unique, you stand out, honey, because of who you are, who you want to be and what you do. We all want to be special, particularly if we've been mistreated, which for almost everybody is almost all of the time. And here's the real clincher; being an outsider means YOU'RE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS SHIT. It's a beautiful lie, really-- it makes me want to go sailing, or sip gin and tonics in the sun at my favorite artsy hangout, looking at beautiful people. The nameless slop that people are drowning in, the genocidal wars pretty much common as diarrhea, the windy bullshit that passes as truth in the mouths of people who know better, none of it has anything to do with you. This society crap is for peons who don't know what's happening to them, for deluded capitalist running dogs, for fat suburban families choking on cholesterol or their healthy counterparts choking on their high protein diets, for the vicious secret police and army forces that run the half of the world not run by openly vicious police and army forces. But you're an artist, and outside all that. You're against it and don't participate, which makes you swell to be around. You've got more important things on your mind. You're "pure." Even ordinary life, with its unfortunate compromises, its incidental failings, its obligations, its need to go to the grocery and the bathroom, even its pleasures, all of them are felt by you to be just a little demeaning, something your art allows you to rise above. You're sensitive, which is why you became an artist in the first place. The very existence of other people impinges on your free creative rights as an individual. You are, above all else, an individual. It's what makes you an outsider-- most other people are so willing to conform. Which is why you aren't part of anything, why what goes on in the rest of the world isn't your fault but the fault of the damn conformists. You told them, but they wouldn't listen. It's a beautiful story. Too bad it isn't true. Oh, there's that again, just when our imaginations were about to play freely all over the bodies of other people. Come on, artists, let's stop pretending we're so real, virtuous, etc. Let's get phony and admit it. That's a party I'd like to go to. As far as I can tell, the main thing that makes artists different from other people is that they practice art, something I try not to hold against them. Like other members of the species, they're formed in the womb of the female. When they're babies they cry a lot, and like other babies they need their diapers changed. They go to schools in different neighborhoods, have friends and enemies and parents, they can be competitive or passive aggressive, friendly or mean. In the United States, they're probably especially good at hating high school, but only occasionally do they refuse to attend it. Some of them may run away from home. On the whole, they probably do not present a huge or even minor behavioral difficulty for the society they live in, although they sometimes annoy art-hating fascists who refuse to mind their own business, or say sarcastic things about bastards who deserve much worse. Except in a few cases, they tend to be infected terminally with ethics, which in some cases they proclaim too noisily, in others deny too noisily. But they're not any better than others when it comes to how they trea people. They can be pompous and self-aggrandizing, or full of self-loathing, they can be sly or blithely unaware. They tell lies well, something they've often practiced, and which perhaps they ought to be admired for more. They often have jobs, although since sometimes they're not abnormally stupid, they tend not to like them. Sometimes they have families and go to picnics. Occasionally they have sex with other people's husbands or wives, an important social task for which I try not to respect them too much. Sometimes they enjoy things, although there's an unfortunate trend among them to pretend that's an impossibility. Certainly they suffer, they can't shut up about their suffering, but hey, who does shut up about it, and why should they?

Close