Distressed Denim & Unnecessary Lies
Distressed Denim & Unnecessary Lies
Episode 01:09:2023 - Prompt: Faith
Where faith took me…
George Michael’s distressed denim in his 1987 music video Faith first came to mind for this prompt. I then thought about paying for clothes that look like they’ve lived a tougher life than the wearer…
Which got me to unnecessary lies.
I recently watched Misha and The Wolves (Sam Hobkinson, 2021), a documentary about a woman who fabricated a memoir of her survival of the Holocaust. It turned out Misha was really Monique, a Catholic girl living safely with her relatives in Brussels throughout the Nazi occupation, not a Jewish girl walking from Belgium to Germany to reunite with her parents.
It was a lie she didn’t need to tell.
“I lived in Berlin for three years in the early 90s,” I used to say. The statement afforded me a lot of social credibility but was not entirely true. How do I know?
I was working on the set of Immortal Beloved in Prague the week before I stepped onto the Friedrichstraße S-Bahn platform in Berlin where boys in gold Spandex shorts danced to techno music blasting from a boombox. Day one of Love Parade.
I left Berlin in dramatic fashion on Halloween and moved into an apartment on the corner of Allen & Rivington in New York. I know for sure I was packing in the sweltering heat to move out of that same apartment when Princess Diana died.
Using these universal dates - the release of Immortal Beloved (1994), Love Parade (July 2), Halloween (Oct 31) and Princess Diana’s death (Aug. 1997) - I know I lived in Berlin for 2 years and 4 months (July 2, 1994 – October 31, 1996).
Why is it worth correcting my unnecessary lie?
On the first walk I ever took in Silverlake, a yellow Hummer almost ran me over.
“Why the f*ck would you do that?” I shouted.
“Because I can,” said the driver.
Is it wrong to embellish our personal narratives just because we can? My “three years in the early nineties” pales to Misha’s living with wolves to avoid the Nazis during the war, but perhaps her lies started small, too. It’s the slippery slope of distressed denim, a wearable symbol of fabricated experience.
YOUR TURN: Using FAITH as a springboard, write about an unnecessary lie you tell/told just because you can/could. Don’t worry about being a “good writer”. Just get that sucker out in less than 150 words (basically the middle section above where I deconstructed my Berlin lie).
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My neighbor/friend has faith in me, but a few months ago I lied to her.
I walk another neighbor's dogs—because he can't—and stop by to say hello to this neighbor/friend. The dogs often poop during our walks, and I pick it up. Except when I throw the poo in the woods. One time, when my faith-in-me neighbor asked if Slick had pooped, I said no. I didn't want her to think I hadn't picked it up. That little lie. Oh me of little faith.
It was not the lie itself (there are many deceptions that support this lie) , but the confession and accountability that came after.
After accepting the self lies i was participating in.
It was all within wanting to be good. To not give breath that I could be racist and bias. It is what I had applauded myself with NOT having. I did not have THOSE bad parts.
My liberalism was the lie. My white feminism was the lie.
I could say I was good, but never go deep into my generational internalization of white supremacy.
I could say I was good and participate in behaviours that signaled to other white liberals, I was good.
I could say I was good, and participate in a drug trade that supported mass incarceration and political drug wars.
I could say I was good , and vote (stickers on social media) for tone deaf millionaires that could care less about the anarchy needed now.
I could say I was good, and “donate” “volunteer” and express my rage at the system into a vacuum.
I CAN say I’m good by disentangling from my own lies that aren’t lies to anyone but myself. The lie that needed a confession was my own, to myself. It’s an inside job, which when practiced, reached far and wide.
I feel no judgement when these things come to light, but a discernment that forgiveness comes only with understanding. And understanding comes only with no shame, and shameless forgiveness does not ask for right or wrong. Just witness of ourselves. With love and tenderness.
I have faith in human capacity for understanding, critical thinking and the lies we tell ourselves to be good. We are full of good parts.