The Mirror

So I want to talk about politics in film but I don't want to talk about any film in particular. I guess this would be a good time to discuss why talking about politics in fiction is important and/or interesting.

The short answer is that all fiction has a relationship with reality. Idea Channel did a pretty good idea explaining it with Ms. Marvel via the concept of representation but that still casts the concept in the light of social justice. I want to speak more broadly.

I am a guy who feels he's often been ignored as a result I know that sometimes saying exactly what you mean just doesn't work. Fiction is a tool that allows for subtly and when called for ambiguity letting people identify more closely with the ideas being presented.

These aren't just things being told to you but characters who in a way you view as yourself.

Moreover stories, stories give us a way of talking without talking. In this world there are things I can't say, things I can't be. Normally truth is a binary. Something is or it is not. Words are either the truth or a lie. Fiction, metaphor, allegory. These things allow for a breakdown in that binary. The ability to construct a lie to tell a truth, in some cases a hard truth, a subjective truth or even more difficult to communicate an abstract truth.

Years ago I saw the world as numbers. Beauty can be explained as the laws of light. Harmony as the laws of air. But then I asked what is this strange creature I gaze in the mirror. Why does he move? Why does he think? Why does he speak? And numbers, facts they did not hold this truth.

So I had to look in other places. On the page, on the canvas and on the screen. I saw in these places the same mirror. A place to observe the man. To see him move in the darkness. To see him move in the light.  And with that I came a little closer to the truth I can not know.

Is an unknowable truth, truth. Truth is known. Truth is certainty. But the mirror, the image shifts and moves with the beast as it is alive and simply can not still itself. Every time the beast moves the mirror moves with it and the truth is lost once more.

The truth I seek can not be found but it is the attempt that seems to matter most. I cannot hold my truth only slowly approach it. The closer I get to it the farther I find myself from it like a glint in the sunlight.  The slightest tilt of the head, movement of the eye, and it is gone.

I wish to share my truth as it was shared with me. But to speak a truth I do not know a truth I can only guess at. How do I do that.

I craft a lie to speak my truth.