Thursday, March 10, 2005

I just had a very unpleasant experience after teching at PS122 for ASAF this Monday that I've had rolling around in my head, and what better place to expel it than here, the digital pages of this blog--after all, isn't that what these things are for?

On our way out of the building we ran into someone who recognized me and said, "Oh, you're the lying fiction guy!" I nodded, a little confused, but she said she liked our postcards, and then she was gone before I could clarify that ALL STORIES ARE FICTION is not, in fact, a bunch of 'lying fiction".

I know it's a leading title, and so I made this bed myself by being clever, but I want to set the record straight before both God and Google by posting it here: All Stories Are Fiction is a series of autobiographical monologues I tell, and the material within them is wholly non-fictional. However, I believe that the act of telling any story is an act of fiction--the moment we make decisions about what to remember and not remember, what to say and what remains unsaid, in that half-breath all stories become fiction because the truth is vapor and nuance that cannot survive direct observation--our biases don't allow it.

But don't let this make you think I'm some namsy-pansy deconstructionist--I'm a big believer in truth, and of the truths that i hold to be self-evident is emotional truth, and that's the truth I think that stories are best suited to reveal. So the take-away here is that ALL STORIES ARE FICTION is autobiographical, always, now and forever--but just because stories are autobiography doesn't give them a license to not be fiction, and just because something is fiction doesn't mean it isn't true.