The Mission of Art is to Lie

The mission of art is to lie. And through these lies, to service a greater truth. A certain truth which a purely objective recollection of events could never approach. To encode these events not as they actually happened, but as they should have happened, in these hypertext reveries.

But the myths dissolve, as they always do, when communities can no longer maintain a critical mass of family, fans, users, supplicants, or faithful to tell their own stories.

First, they are hollered from the rooftops, over busted bluetooth speakers and everyone remembers and can agree on all the details, never mind the minor creative liberty here or there, the raucous laughter is too affirming, the recognition of things unsaid and details omitted all to palpable.

Then, gosh, only a few years later they're all predicated on hedges like "Do you remember when... ?" and, "Didn't Johnny 2-Step once end up in Zion and... ?"

In the final stages of forgetting you have the sinking realization whilst drunk at 2 A.M. that maybe you're the only one who can still make out the general contour of events. The final one who bore witness. And then: poof. Sleep overtakes. Gone. You never think about it again. And shall never remember that you even forgot.

Monkey hands tap these monkey words into a dying iPhone, its failing battery levels a memento mori to our gasoline generator. Something was wrong with the first one. So we did the only logical thing: we switched to the bigger one. A couple of phones, a tablet, a watch, a few battery packs... 'Been running all night and our devices are barely half-charged.

Somewhere, owls still gather in schools and sing in 7/4 to an embryonic moon.