On Honesty (with an introductory digression on the nature of the Essay)
I will get to the premise of this essay soon, I promise. I wouldn’t lie to you. Not here at least. Not in an essay about honesty.
But before I begin that essay, I felt I needed to write this one. I know, I know. Typically, digressions and tangents happen once a piece has established itself. If it makes you feel better, you can think of this as an introduction, or a two for one special. Lucky you.
You see, this is the first essay I have written since university, seven years ago. That is a long time, a quarter of my life. So I thought it would be a good thing to wonder at this literary form before using it to explore other topics.
Most of us think of essays as the papers we were made to write in school, done to prove that we knew enough about TOPIC and then moved on from. The reason we were made to do this was because our teachers and professors wanted us to learn how to make an argument, and to support that argument with evidence. Noble goals, tedious results.
However, it is worth reflecting on the origins of the form. The name gives us a clue. Essay, as in, to essay forth. To venture, to strive, to go. This was not some highly formal or stylized writing, it was people winging it on a topic, seeing where their thoughts would go and what conclusions they would draw.
The man who popularized and/or invented it was Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), a French Intellectual and Humanist. He used the essay to explore the finer points of philosophy and cannibalism. They’re fun reads if you have the time. He mentions what other people have written or said, but it wasn’t formalized or stylized. He mentions the works of others when he felt like it, when it strikes his mind as relevant to the topic at hand.
Somehow, over the years, that freeform exploration of our world became what it is today. It has lost its freedom, its willingness to explore. And so I have come to reclaim the essay. In here you will find no footnotes with additional reading, nor endnotes with references. I am going to say what I’m going to say, explore what is before me. I’m not looking to realign the world of essay writing with this, but to use its traditional form to discover what I think about things, just as I write to explore the things that I believe in.
With all that said, and with my stated goal in mind to have a long ramble through the gentle countryside of my chosen topic, here at last is the essay that I promised you. I have no finish line, no goal, no aim. I will explore the world I live in as I write, and I may be struck by thoughts as I do so. This will be stream of conscience, and if that’s not your cup of tea, then fair play to you. My topic will be honesty.
No, not the tell the truth sort of honesty, or at least that day-to-day sort when we should tell the truth as we see it. You should, when you can. See, easy. Done. What a quick essay. Yeah, so instead I will be writing about honesty in art. That topic seems much more interesting to me.
Recently, I went on a road trip. I love a road trip. I think it is an art in of itself. It is a truly American way to travel. You pick a direction and just go, stopping off when you want and seeing the things you want to. An essay of its own, in a sense. I did a lot of them as a kid, and have recently gotten back into it.
This particular trip was from Memphis to Clarksdale, and then across the center of Arkansas and up to Fayetteville. We had a lot of different places to go to. I stood at Dockery and had an experience similar to what Jake Blues had in James Brown’s church.
After a day spent at the National Chuckwagon Races in Clinton, AR, we headed by back roads to for an hour and a half towards Paris. My friend was driving. He knew the roads. I was being taken along twists and turns across a beautiful hilly state. There were a couple of wrong turns, but hey, that’s road tripping.
We weren’t always on the satnav. That’s how I like it.
Moving from large roads to small ones, crossing the Arkansas river and driving past a Benedictine monastery that makes beer[1][2] until eventually we hit a gravel road. All the while, I was wondering when we would get there. After all, I had no idea where we were going, only that my friend was willing to drive us an hour and a half out of the way to eat at this place[3].
Then I see the sign. PrestonRose. It’s a simple sign, carved in wood and hanging on a post. No neon, no telephone pole. Honestly I didn’t get a good look at it on the way in and had I seen it I would have thought that it was a ranch or some sort of old mansion style home where everyone in the surrounding hills knew about the gentry who lived on the hill.
Instead, I found myself on a working farm. There was a home and various outbuildings. There were fields where the food we were soon to eat was growing. Parked, we started walking to a long wooden building. Along the path there, we bumped into a smiling, bearded man wearing a ball cap, t-shirt, and jeans. He was a towering six foot five and had the bearing of Santa Claus.
He led us inside and I was treated to a beautiful meal three course meal. Each stage was delicious from start to finish. I could eat that roasted cheese spread endlessly. I should point out rather shamefully that while at the races I ate a basket of chicken tenders and fries, which would typically tide me over for the day. I was pushing my limits. Still, I couldn’t help myself.
Everything I ate and drank was either made on that farm, or on the farm of their friends. I’ve never had a better tomato. In my life, full stop. If more tomatoes tasted like that, and not the bland watery garbage for sale across America, then I would have them on more hamburgers. Rose, Preston’s wife, made six beers. I loved two, liked one, and thought the other three weren’t for me. You know what, that’s okay too.
Periodically, Preston would come through and talk briefly with his customers. He shared his life when asked. I learned that the restaurant I was eating at was the latest in a series of businesses he and his wife had owned. He said “I’ve been a millionaire and I’ve been broke.”
Try and try again. That seemed to be the motto there. A motto best exemplified by changing their menu every weekend. This was my only time going there (hopefully not in my life). My friend had been there three times. Now fifty-two weekends in the year, it sounds like an awful lot to me to never do the same thing twice. I’m sure they’ve got favorites or a rotation that they come back to. It doesn’t really matter to me.
Still, to say “Wow, people really liked that emu chili we did last weekend, let’s switch it up,” is such an impressive thing to do for that small staff of three, who, by the way, farm the fields every day.
In talking to my friend about the experience on our hour and a half drive to finish the day, and it got me thinking about honesty in art. My friend said it best as we were leaving. “I love this place because it is people doing their craft to the best of their ability.”
Boom. There it was. Honesty. Artistic honesty found in the foothills of Arkansas. No faff, no bells and whistles. A simple meal grown by the chefs who served it too. They made this meal for me, full stop. Honesty in art is when the artist can tell you something about themselves or their worldview without feeling the need to distract you or trick you.
Art has a way of becoming indulgent or self-aggrandizing. Writing does as well. People get in the way. They want to take an artist and produce them, make them marketable. They are focused on the wrong aspects. I firmly believe that all art has a message. If it doesn’t have one, then it’s not art. That message doesn’t have to be profound. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. All art says something about the world as the artist sees it. Sometimes, that gets diluted. Often times by the artist or someone involved in its creation does that.
There is something attractive in something looking you in the eye and telling you what is it. I think that in recent times, because of the internet, we have been able to criticize things and have that criticism heard far easier. That has led to artists is a variety of mediums to shield themselves in making their art. Its natural. I know that I’ve felt that way. I’ve changed things in my writing because I didn’t know how it would be taken. There is less honesty in the art that we experience. That’s why when we find it, it is that much more attractive.
Let’s be honest, I want my writing to be successful, popular. I probably should have written other stories; epic poetry has been struggling in the market ever since the Tale of Genji first got sold. Murasaki Shikibu destroyed my craft a thousand years before I was born. I write because I want to explore the things that I believe in and see if they hold up, or if I discover some other facet of the topic and that becomes the attractive idea to me.
That does lead my writing to strange places, creeks I didn’t think I would be paddling down. Those get cut along the path. I do it to streamline my writing, which I feel can’t be long and meandering, even in something long like an epic poem. While I trim the branches, I try to keep the tree safe. Still, I know that in the works I put out in the world, I am not always being honest to myself. I played it safe.
Quite a lot these days plays it safe, because, I think, the internet makes it easier for people to dislike a thing. As wonderful as it is for helping people find things to like, it also does the opposite. Production companies are especially sensitive, and give themselves offramps if something isn’t well received. It feels like they don’t believe in the art that they’re putting out there. In playing it safe, they create bland art that won’t get people angry at them. But they also don’t make the art that they wanted to make. Their creation is not honest to who they are and why they wanted to make things in the first place. In striving to make something sell, they have failed to make something true.
Look. Prestonrose most likely won’t ever win a Michelin Star. The restaurant was wooden, a large noisy fan blew in from the side. There were flies and the bathroom was a porta potty (it was the nicest porta potty I had been in that day so I wasn’t complaining). But so what? These surroundings didn’t ruin the meal, and I was there to eat the meal, not just the woodwork. That’s what it’s about. And by the way, the prices of everything was
Their food was full of a spirit of adventure. Let’s try this and see if we like it, because if they didn’t like it then it wouldn’t go out into the world. Their food told me “trust us, this is worth your time and money.” I’m not quite sure how it told me, but an honest word is rarely a loud word.
The meal I ate was made with passion. It was grown with care. It was eaten by a man who had chicken tenders three hours before and couldn’t get enough. I know beyond a doubt that the meal was set on the table in front of me was made the best that it could have been made by the people who made it.
I don’t think you can ask anything more of an artist. Even if you disagree with the message of their art, which is more that reasonable, when they have put their best effort into a piece, their dedication is above reproach. Their art has been honest with you, and that is important to the dialogue between us.
During our meal, Preston came by as he was wont to do. In that conversation he said, “I bet you never thought you could find a meal like this down a dirt road.” That stuck with me. I’ve driven all over this country. I’ve been down an awful lot of dirt roads. I don’t think that I ever doubted that there would be something worthwhile down them. Honest art is found all over, and it’s worth getting a little dust for.
[1] An aside: I’ve always wanted to get monk made beer. Didn’t happen this time, but that just gives me something to aspire towards for the next one. I don’t know why I want to go there so badly. I think what excites me about it is the thought that these boozy monks are the heirs and practitioners of something deeply sacred. You see, the reason the human race gathered together into cities was because they needed society to manufacture beer. The warehouses where the ingredients and final product were stored were overseen by priests, priests who invented writing in order to keep track of everything. When you drink monk made beer, you are partaking in the sacred nectar of civilization, the reason any of us live in cities, or write, or read. I don’t think I’ve ever had monk made beer, but I know that I will someday. I don’t even care if it’s any good. I just want a sip of that brew, the one that brought us out of the forests and into the cities. Miller doesn’t itch that scratch. Or any, if I’m being honest.
[2] Hmm, it looks like I lied to you about the whole endnotes thing. I write in Word but I’ll publish this on WordPress. Maybe it will become an end note by then. But I am sticking to the stream of consciousness thing and if I feel I must contradict my past self, I will. Words are not cannonballs.
[3] My friend had an incredible map of places he’d eaten and wanted to eat. A hundred places all through the midsouth. I mention it only because it was a way to organize oneself so different from the one familiar to me. I liked looking at this map because it reveals an ambition I admire.
Michael Frutig 