“Without use or purpose or patrimonial desire” could have been a phrase from Captain Alatriste, but José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said it yesterday on television when asked about the jewels in his safe. We have been seeing and hearing similar things for so long – declarations, commissions, interviews – that we are exhausted. From this weariness, a sadness has been distilled as we recognize that we no longer care whether his (or anyone else’s) is true or false. Let him invent it, let it be debatable, improbable, or insane. We are on another screen. No longer on the one where it was impossible for us to recognize the truth from the false, but on one where the truth no longer matters. It even bothers us to know that it exists. We are tired of the narrative, we are tired of who will be right. We are tired of believing and distrusting one another. We want someone to win, for the World Cup to end, for them to leave us in peace.
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We have been living with lies systematically for too long, at all hours and everywhere. We were lied to so that we wouldn’t get discouraged. So that we wouldn’t stop believing. We were lied to so that we would keep voting. We are lied to so that we doubt and don’t vote. We are lied to for the end of times, we are lied to to take inventory, burn, and clean.
Everyone comes out and denies everything, and lying is part of the cunning of the ruler and the aspirant
Everyone comes out – now and before – and denies everything, and lying is part of the cunning of the ruler and the aspirant, a virtue like solvency or loquacity. To lie and not care. To be lied to and not care.
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I would like to think that when they start telling us the truth, we will like it. Yesterday marked fifteen years since Amy Winehouse died. Listen to her songs and read her lyrics and see the power of what is assumed and not hidden (loving much but badly, being vulnerable, not being trustworthy, knowing what one doesn’t want, the fact that one will fall again). What hurts and heals, that not deceiving oneself, being who one is, with one’s actions and disasters, failures and decisions, with an ethics that is not for sale. One knew that Amy Winehouse, that her art, was true. That intangible. And that’s why it mattered and still matters to us when we remember her. Singers and songs, jewels with use, destiny, and desire. “You know I’m no good”.
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