Here is an excerpt from a conversation with a friend whom for the sake of anonymity we’ll call Charlie.
Charlie: I can’t stop myself from lying about tiny little things that no one can find out about.
Me: Like what?
Charlie: Well if Charlita [Charlie’s girlfriend] asks me what I’ve had for dinner then I’ll just say fish fingers even if I’ve had rice. Then I start to forget which I’ve really had.
Not exactly Watergate but – utter bullshit. Charlie is also a pretty successful musician who is signed to a record label and seems to have all the fun of the fair touring around the UK. I’m not saying that because Charlie lies, he becomes Eddie Van Halen but is that streak of LIES that seems to compulsively flow out of our pal a signifier of something more curious in his psychology?
A big past time of mine is rock climbing and the progression of this beautifully expressive sport and recording of its annals relies on people telling the truth. There’s a famous story within our little community of a guy called Rich Simpson. He was a man of undoubted ability; blessed with immense strength and gymnastic prowess who famously climbed one of the world’s hardest routes – Action Directe. Or so we thought.
A film showing Rich’s supposed progression towards this goal cast his claims into doubt due to the finale which seems to show him climbing the route but in an oddly idiosyncratic cut and chop edit. His sponsors asked for more proof at which point he immediately resigned from his duties and disappeared.
His claims of a sub 4-minute mile, Cambridge education and a 17-0 amateur boxing record were also hotly disputed. But the question that everyone asked was why? Why would a guy who had a successful career doing what he loved lie?
Could it be, that just like Charlie, Rich Simpson was almost compelled to do it? Ian Leslie’s wonderful book, Born Liars, talks about a possible reason for this. Confabulation. A word that couldn’t sound more made up could point to an explanation for these little psycho-quirks. It is defined as ‘the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive’. It’s usually bought on after a brain injury and is in essence the wonderfully paradoxical – honest lie.
Leslie uses an example of a young man who had a car accident but was left with damage to his frontal lobes (where your creativity flows from). After this accident he began to confabulate magnificently and tell stories of saving people from car wrecks and killing unseen aggravators with full police approval. You couldn’t write it. Except that’s exactly what you could do.
As creators is this our burden? Does your creativity come from a twisted brain, spewing bollocks that you think is real? Maybe – but you know what they say. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
