Is It Real, Or Is It . . .

Mr. Richard Federer of East Brunswick, New Jersey, writes, 'Dear Jazzding.  Are you for real?  In the last week you've written about being held up in New Orleans and also about having a friend die in your arms.  In another post, you go on and on about how you've never had a problem in any city, that the bad stuff just leaves you alone.  What gives?  Are you fact or fiction?

Dear Richard,

I am neither fact nor fiction;  or rather I'm both fact and fiction.  Everything I write is real and true, and some of what I write is a shameless lie. 

What is a Blog, anyway?  There are lots of different kinds, I know.  Ones that have a very narrow and well defined focus, ones that are designed to teach or persuade.  Mine has no focus and no pretentions of pedantry. It's more of a diary.  I try to capture what I'm thinking and doing in the moment if my thoughts and actions are the least bit interesting.  Often they are not.

Consider January 30 of this year.  I was in New Orleans.  It was a Saturday.  The night before was wild and bizarre.  The next day and night would be more so.  But on Saturday, here's what I wrote:

Nothing much happened today.  I walked and walked, ate an Oyster Po 'Boy, Saw a Mardi Gras Parade and decided if that's all there is, I don't understand   I drank beer at Rawhide and the Voodoo Bar.  Then had dinner at the African Restaurant across from the Lantern:  It was outstanding.

I ended the evening watching the Golden Girl Review at the Golden Lantern.  The Golden Girls are a team of mostly ancient drag queens.  I'm not talking middle aged, I'm talking old, like in their 70's.  They get all dolled up and lipsynch to old cabaret numbers.  It starts out funny . . . but quickly becomes touching, too. 

Now, I could have taken off about several things that occurred that day,  I could have told you about the bathroom at the Rawhide or given a detailed description of the VooDoo Bar, which is a very unique and unusual place.  I could go on and on about Oysters and why they taste so good in the deep south.  I could have described in detail that wonderful African dinner.  And, of course, the Golden Girls were rich fodder for fun and personal insight. 

I could have written about these things, but I didn't:  they weren't of particular interest to me in the moment.  I was also not in much of a writing mood.  If you haven't noticed, I have paragraphs and pages in me about absolutely nothing.  So, if I'm in the mood, I can write.  I could probably write if I were in a coma. 

Back to truth vs. fiction.  I'll give you a hint.  And I'll give it to you only once.  I was never held up in New Orleans or anywhere else for that matter.  In the piece about Jewel's Bar, everything leading up to the encounter with the thief is absolutely true.  Everything after is made up.  I've never known anyone who died violently in a barroom situation.  In 'Boys, Booze, Blood and Bourbon Street,' everything that happens up to the point where I walk out of the bar is true.  It all happened.  Everything from the moment the door opens until the end is fiction.  It never happened. 

So, why?  Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?  Why am I compelled to mix truth and fiction in this fashion?  What am I trying to accomplish?  (That's my favorite question; has been for ages) 

I'm trying to have fun with the facts, to make them more interesting.  If I'd told the truth in either of those blogs, there'd just been more and more of the same.  Nothing much would have happened -- because ususally, nothing much happens.  We sleep, we wake, we eat, we work, we party.  There's only so much you can say about that. 

But we can also play 'what if' and in so doing, stretch our imagination and take our typing fingers on a magic carpet ride.  It's like our beloved President, George W. Bush and Iraq.  Remember when he and his stooges were making the case for going to war?  Remember when they talked about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)?  They had pictures and charts and all kinds of crap to back up their assertion that Iraq was certainly preparing to nuke us all.  We had to act now to prevent this global catastrope from happening.

Obviously, everything from the moment the charts and photos came out, everything from the first mention of WMDs and on, was an utter fabrication.  There were no WMDs.  And don't be so naieve as to believe that our government and military really thought there were.  Remember:  we have the ability to read your automobile license plate from space.  They knew. So why the lie?

It made the entire process of invading a nation, of sending the blossom of our youth to their deaths for absolutely nothing, more palatable to us folks back home.  If George W. had told the truth -- that the reason he wanted to invade Iraq was his own personal vendetta against Sadaam because Sadaam once ordered a hit on George W's father -- we'd have all said, 'Are you kidding?  I'm not going to send my kids over to fight and die for that.  You just need to get back with your bad self and get over it.' 

We are easily hypnotized, us Americans.  We want so much to believe in our own goodness and the loftyness of our ideals, that the right speaker saying we are threatened can cause us to close ranks and fight like tigers.  Who has the Weapons of Mass Destruction?  We do.  Who is the conquering invader?  We are.  Who is perceived as a dangerous loose canon roaming the earth in search of a fight?  We are. 

Do you remember the first several months of George W's first term in office?  Do you remember what he did in those first  90 days?  He bombed Iraq.  Just for the heck of it.  Oh, there were stories about violations of the no-fly zone and of suspected weapons cache's, etc.  But truth is, George W. ordered a hit on Iraq just because he could.  And this happened long before the attack on the World Trade Towers and Pentagon, long before we became a justifiably outraged and vengeful people. 

So, kiddies, when I take license with the truth, I am in good company.  W does it all for packaging.  For him, lying is a marketing tool.  I fib to make my blog-life more interesting.  I tell tales so I don't get bored. 

Remember Cat's Cradel?  Kurt Vonnegut's book?  Remember Bokonan and the religion he represents?  He believes that life is senseless chaos (hello!) and that we choose to believe a myriad of little lies to give life meaning and order.  And to Bokonan, this is ok.  We just need to acknowledge that's what we're doing and get on with it. 

If Geo W were a follower of Bokonan, he'd have stood bfore us with his charts and pictures and said, 'Listen kids.  I'm going to invade Iraq to get this evil Sadaam guy, ok?  I know this won't be popular with most of you, especially those of you whose kids will get killed -- so I've created this little story for you to take comfort in. 

And so it would go . . .

Remember the First Book of Bokonan?  It begins:  'All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.' 

In my case, it might have said, 'A few of the true things I'm about to tell you are shameless lies.'  Which is to say that most of what I tell you is true. 

If you're bothered by this flip-flopping across the lines of veracity, please let me know and I'll invent some kind of device to indicate when the bull-goose-looney takes over . . . like, maybe I'll put the fantasy in red or something.  Just let me know:  what's your pleasure?