Truth – a post inspired by my latest counselling session and HitRECord.org.

Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Raheem

Assalam alaikum wr wb,

I've been thinking about why I create art for this thread on HitRECord.org.

A fellow poster on the HitRECord forum prompted me to examine my intentions on entering journalism, since I've been dreaming of being a screenwriter/filmmaker since I was a kid.

This morning's counseling session was all about questioning my perceptions and internally validated truths. I go into a situation expecting something. My feelings of anxiety make any molehills into mountains. My body language changes, expecting an adversary in my interviewee, rather than an ally. My interviewee perceives this change and reacts accordingly, further validating my beliefs. Heck, just thinking about it constricts my chest. My expectation is validated and becomes what I perceive to be a "fact", when in fact, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

These three trains of thoughts converged to form the following ruminations:

What is truth? If I assume (for the purposes of convenience) a binary opposition between truth and fiction, how will I know truth if I do not know fiction and vice versa?

(I don't actually know the answers to any of these questions, but I suppose I'll just sort my thoughts on the matter.)

I've been taught that journalism should be based on hard cold facts. Facts should be checked and rechecked and re-rechecked. But what exactly is defined as hard and cold? Where are raw emotions less acceptable journalistically than numbers, figures, laws and political positioning? Why is the macro (the externally verifiable) always more important and "serious" than the micro (the unquantifiable)?

Let's take the credit crunch as an example. It is more acceptable for me to speak to a stockbroker, a financial analyst, an economist at a university than it would be for me to speak to the average Joe having to deal with lost jobs, lost houses, lost dreams – though those feelings are just as real, just as important and just as crippling as anything Lehman brothers or GM might be facing right now.

All of this, for me, points to the political nature of truth. Truth is not as solid as we think it is. The "truth" will change, depending on whom you talk to. Different people will approach the same facts in different ways. Also, as I was taught in my Global Politics class, they're always leaving out something, usually something inconsistent with their world view. Even numbers, as implacable as they might seem, do not grasp the whole picture.

Truth is also contingent on titles, on appearances, sometimes even gender - men's opinions are sometimes accepted ipso facto. You see a dude's picture next to his column in a newspaper. He's wearing a suit and the jowls and smug impression of a white middle-class man. The caption reads, "So-and-so is the weekly columnist for blah blah daily." Why do you believe him? Why should you believe him? What are his qualifications? Even if he does have an impressive pedigree, that doesn't mean he's smart. Look at Ann Coulter; that cow went to frickin' Cornell University and her spew isn't good enough to go on my garden.

Still, I have what I reckon is an insatiable curiosity – for machinations both at the macro and micro-level. I want to know what people think. What they really do, as opposed to what they're supposed to be doing. What they say their jobs are and what they really are. I think I'm a dirt-digger. I live in a country with its head so far up its butt, it's eyeball-to-eyeball with yesterday's dinner. I've seen people screwed over too many times to not want to use my voice in their defence. What I can do, I will do. I suppose it might be penance in a way, throwing myself in harm's way like this. It is also justifying my privilege, rather than ignoring it. I believe, as God's servant, that that's why He gave me the blessing of education.

But why do I write – or create art, more accurately? I create so that I can drop back into myself after a long day. So that I never lose my sense of wonder. So that I can fight off the sense of jadedness that comes with adulthood and the damn "real world". For me, writing (and hopefully soon enough, film-making) is about escapism, catharsis, about finding new meanings, new beginnings, exploring new vistas, new perspectives. I find my creative writing feeds the sort of curiosity I manifest in my journalistic work and vice versa.

Must truth and fiction necessarily be in dialectical opposition? Why can't I live at the apex of these two beautiful forms of expression?

Yes I can. I am a journalist and a writer and hopefully soon, film-maker.

Thanks for listening.

Wassalam and Fee Amanillah,
Zed