They will say, with their eyes, “I am a sad person and I’m taking this bullshit thing very seriously. Please please tell me you agree with me on this. I need you to agree with me on this for some reason. I know deep in my heart whatever I need you to say is not true. I just need you to help me lie to myself about it so I can move on with my crazy delusional life. Just lie to me about this one thing and I will leave you alone, I promise. Even just a side lie, where I ask you what you honestly think and you say, ‘It’s not really my thing;’ can you muster that? At least just feign ignorance, for my sake. Just a tiny lie. I’ve had a rough couple of months/years/entire life and I need to hear a lie or two right now. That’s not so hard, is it?” Of course they’re saying all of this with their eyes. What they’re saying with their mouths is something along the lines of, “isn’t [some thing] just… the best?”
Of course you’re gonna break down and lie in that situation. There are degrees of lying, and the utility of telling somebody you barely know that you like their pencil drawing of a fetus in order to end the conversation and more quickly not have to talk to them ever again is just too high to ignore. But: it’s still a lie. Forced or not. And lying is trouble.
Technically the better thing to do is say that you don’t like it, in fact you very much don’t like it, and you can’t figure out why they did it, and more importantly you can’t figure out why they would do such a thing if a stranger’s opinion about it is going to be so important later that they’d want to pressure that stranger into lying about it. And, oddly, isn’t a publicly displayed pencil drawing of a fetus supposed to be kind of a “fuck you?” Am I even supposed to like it? Honestly, I don’t like it as either a thing or as a “fuck you.” It’s an incredibly clumsy “fuck you.” I’m not impressed by it in any way. Let me be clear about this: whichever response will mean less conversation with you about art, or really anything, that’s what I’m looking to give you. This fetus drawing is fantastically mediocre. It provokes no particular response, other than a desire to laugh at it briefly through my nose and then move on forever. I cannot believe I have thought about it for this long. Goodbye.
Technically that’s better. Because that’s honest.
But in a way the more honest thing to do is to say “it’s really good,” and then avoid eye contact and get the Hell out of there. Because that’s at least emotionally honest. That’s a between-the-lines way of saying, “Hey, I’m a nice guy and I don’t want to get into it with you about this pencil-drawing fetus. I just want to go to dinner and laugh about it with my girlfriend for like 4 seconds until we start talking about something else.”
The real lie going on there is the original lie. The lie of the artist to himself about whether or not he’s pulling it off with this pencil-drawing-of-a-fetus stuff.
Art is weird. It’s almost completely subjective to say what’s good and what’s not. You can describe some qualities that most people would objectively consider to be general qualities of good art. “Provocative” is one of those qualities. But of course “provocative” is just a word. It gets used so much in so many different ways that it doesn’t really describe anything until you add more words to it. And you’ve got a lot of weird people doing art, some of whom won’t understand that making something that’s “provocative” isn’t the same thing as making good art, because you can’t make good anything if that thing only has one value and that value is as flimsy as “provocative.” Some of these people don’t even understand what they’re “provoking” when they’re being intentionally “provocative.” They’re probably not aiming for strong, resolute, and immediate indifference as a provoked response. But they don’t understand that, some of these weird people who would have you think they “do art.”
And one of those people is currently standing next to a pencil drawing of a fetus, glaring at you like they know something you don’t when in fact it’s the other way around. You know their fetus drawing isn’t good by any measure. And to that end, you also know that irony can only get you so far before you have to get out and walk. Like out of the gallery and, thankfully, on to the next thing in your life that’s not a pencil drawing of a fetus.
Of course if you’re 19, you might not know that about irony yet. You might laugh in that guy’s face about his fetus drawing and tell him that you love it, and then realize that you hurt his feelings a little by assuming he’s in on the joke, and then laugh at the fact that he was serious, and then go over to the wine table and steal a bottle of Trader Joe’s Merlot, and then continue your party of a life through a never ending series of laughing at things you think are dumb and doing stupid shit until you realize life is pretty long and at the end of it, one day, you’re going to die. And then, usually somewhere around age 24-26, you’ll know that irony can only get you so far before you have to get out and walk. Sometimes, though, it gets you pretty far. It’s not totally worthless, thank God.
Anyhow, lying is trouble. But if you’re going to use the above example, the worst lie you can tell is a lie to yourself that you believe. Lies of this nature include, “Yeah man, people don’t know how to handle my fetus drawing art, I’m great.” And, “Oh man, I’m so great I get to laugh at the fetus drawing guy’s face because I did a few things that are better than a fetus drawing.” Neither one of those self-lies really hurt anybody but the person they’re an issue for, but unless that person tries to get rid of them, they’re just going to stay there and reverberate through the years until they grow into the lie-based assumptions for genuine neuroses. In both of these cases we’d be talking about narcissism. But there are other common self-lies that turn into other things, like how “I know what I’m doing” can turn into OCD after a while, or “I can do anything I want” can turn into a dude who does anything he wants, like hard drugs and homemade porn even though he’s got kids. You’ve got to nip those self-lies in the bud.
I’ve got a few. There’s “I’m interesting.” “I’m special.” “I’m talented at some things.” “I’m smart.” “I’m funny.” “I know what I’m doing.” “I can do anything I want.” “I deserve to be happy.” “I can just do whatever’s easiest and skate by on that.” “I’m meant for better things than sitting in an office all day and/or ever doing the dishes when I’m home.” “I can laugh at that guy’s fetus drawing because I’ve done things that are objectively better than a fetus drawing.” “I could probably pull off a fetus drawing.” “I kind of want to make a t-shirt that says ‘I heart fetus drawings.’”
Most of those I know I’ve got to nip in the bud, because if I don’t it will eventually be a mountain of trouble collapsing on you instead of a kind of pain in the ass thing you should probably deal with. It’s kind of like smoking. Oh yeah, “I can smoke without ever dying because of it.” That’s a good self-lie. And it’s a good demonstration of what self-lies do. It’s like smoking all your life and then when you get cancer being like, “Oshitoshitoshit! I quit! I’m out!” Not happening, Jack. Not happening. That cancer was coming for you for your whole life. You started it. And you failed to stop it in time.
Take the “I can just do whatever’s easiest and skate by on that lie” I tell myself. You know where that ends up? That ends up at a reception desk for a company that brokers the sale of self-storage properties, and convincing yourself you actually like being there. It’s voluntarily hanging out with a bunch of dudes who want nothing in the world more than to make some deals happen in the self-storage industry because to them it is an exciting and complex marketplace full of unique challenges. Did you know that self-storage is a retail business model within an industrial zoning plan? You will. Eventually you will if you just do whatever’s easiest. And you’ll find that doing whatever’s easiest eventually leads you to the hardest fucking thing you’ve ever done in your life, which is feigning interest in the self-storage industry.
Maybe it turns out to be so easy that you are tempted to take classes that will make you know more about the self-storage industry so that you can continue to take even more money from doing things with it. Maybe you will also put a down payment on a condo and move into it with your girlfriend. And you’ll write articles for self-storage industry trade magazines and convince yourself that it’s somehow creatively fulfilling to you. And you’ll raise a family, and you will enjoy that family, and you will feed that family by making a bunch of deals in the self storage industry, and it will all be incredibly easy until one day you realize that what you really want to do is anything else, and you have some ridiculous midlife crisis that involves going to tantric sex workshops with some spaced out idiot half-your-age yoga instructor with a Daddy complex. Which is not the real you either, so much as an overreaction to a lifetime of self-storage dealmaking.
Not that self-storage is an inherently bad way to make a living. It’s just not for everyone. Oddly enough, “it’s not for everyone” does not seem to be a prevalent assumption among practitioners in the self-storage industry. They’re more the type of crowd that’s like, “Of course you’d want to make a killing in self-storage, isn’t that what everybody wants?” That’s one of the things that makes it so easy. They’re just shy of chanting “join us” like Sirens on the rocks. Hideous, hideous Sirens. That want you to lie to yourself about everything.
Yes, self-lies are the worst kind of lie there is. I don’t want to get all Randian about it, but let’s look out for those. They’re the kind of lies that you can lose control over pretty easily. So be on the lookout for them. Also be on the lookout for dudes who want you to tell them how much you like their fetus drawing. It’s not technically lying if you get the fuck out of there before they can get a word in. Sprinting in the opposite direction is an acceptable honest reaction.
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