caught red-handed...

Truth

I’m sitting here, feeling like a fraud.

I’d expect the same from anybody with enough delusion to pick up a pen and talk about truth.

But it’s a topic always worth revisiting.

Our ongoing relationship with it never ends.

I feel like an artist has a duty to aspire to truth.

At the very least, to be honest with themselves.

The path is too slippery to be tripping yourself up.

But still, it is hard.

Hope you enjoy this one

Love you loads

R x

Why do I keep lying?

I’m scared. It’s scary.

I feel like I see others in a bright light and assume that they shine brighter than me.
I try to match it.
I try to show the world that I could be that, too, but it has nothing to do with light.
It’s fear.
The fear of not being accepted, dressed up as confidence in what I’m doing.

And I know I’m not alone.
We all do it.
No matter how far we go, the rabbit hole goes deeper.

Everyone thinks they’re behind.
We’re all looking at each other and
There’s always someone freer.
Richer.
More beautiful.
Younger.

The mind doesn’t seek peace.
It looks for threats.
It seeks leverage.
It shows you what you lack.
It highlights the traits in others you wish you had.
And when that ache gets too loud, it shows you how to lie.
Protects its narrative because all it knows are its assumptions.
Reality takes a while to hurt, better to delay the pain

There’s always a first time.
A time when we realised we didn’t have to be honest.
It’s often earlier than we think.
It starts in childhood.

I think of Mike Kelley's rooms 
filled with stained stuffed animals and dirty laundry.
Turned the forgotten leftovers of childhood into massive, haunted sculptures.
A lack of innocence twitching with confusion.
more psychic residue than nostalgia

I remember my first experience of deceit
I was inept.
As expected.
I was in Preschool.
And for some reason there was a pair of yellow, left-handed scissors.

The teachers held them up. “Whose are these?”
Nobody moved.
What preschooler brings scissors to school?

But they were beautiful.
Something unique…
Left-handed, special…
I still remember the way they were waved above us
Like Simba above his kingdom
With all of us sat cross legged in Awe

I wanted them.
So I said they were mine.

It was a trap.
I became a liar.
Trust snapped.
Naughty corner for days.

But where did the lie start?

Was it in the wanting?
The reaching?
The trap?
Or in the system that teaches us:

if you want something shiny,
you better try and get it?

I still remember that moment (obviously)

But does anybody else?

Maybe I’m the only person who still thinks about it

I hope so…

The anxiety of people seeing, understanding, or remembering what you’ve done is almost always worse than the pain of them finding out.

I’m being purposefully general here.

If you’ve done something awful, being exposed is going to make your life worse.

But for the most part, the kind of secrets most people carry are lighter once they’re out in the open.

And maybe that leads to fewer extreme situations happening in the first place. —-

If you have done something you can’t tell someone and you’re struggling with it, maybe finding a route for it to come out is helpful.

I don’t know.

I’m not a psychotherapist.

But I do know this.

Most people don’t care.

They haven’t got the time

We’re all too wrapped up in our own lives.

Trying to survive.

Trying to drag our carcasses out of bed in the morning.

No matter where we are, we don’t spend much time thinking about each other.

Life’s too short.

And yet the truth still presses on us.

It builds pressure.

And letting it out does something.

Every time I’ve said something real,

Something I’ve been holding

There’s been a release.

First, it feels good.

There’s a hit of dopamine or serotonin or whatever gets released when tension dissolves.

Second, I like myself more.

The honesty brings me closer to something I recognise.

Things feel more aligned.
Calibrated.

And in that moment, something shifts.
It’s small.
But I feel like I’m leading.
Like I’ve done something most people won’t.
And maybe that’s enough.

Why isn’t society optimised for pure truth?

Because when it’s easier to lie and win,

people will.

The system bends toward the person who can tell the better story.

Not the truest one.

The more viral one.

The one that gets picked up.

So what counts as better?

What counts as more accurate?

And who decides that, when we’re also trying to preserve freedom?

In art, this becomes especially complicated.

How much control should the old guard have?

How many rules should exist in a space meant to disrupt them?

Anything that folds itself around a previous structure, even with good intentions, risks reinforcing it.

Even if it claims to challenge it.

Truth becomes slippery fast.

Take a dating app.

If I use a photo from ten years ago, it’s a lie.

But what about one from three months ago?

What about one with perfect lighting and the right crop?

Where does accuracy end and styling begin?

And more importantly,

how capable are we of being accurate in the first place?

Look at the most advanced AI models in the world.

They have access to more information than any human alive.

And they still hallucinate.

Still make things up.

Even our best maps have mistakes.

But we still use them.

We still trust them.

Because for most people, precision isn’t the goal.

It’s usefulness.

It’s results.

It’s comfort.

And truth gets harder when subjectivity enters the picture.

You can believe what you’re saying is true because your life is improving while you say it.

You’re being rewarded.

You feel clearer.

The people around you respond better.

That’s a feedback loop.

And inside that loop,

a local truth can start to feel more real than any global one.

When I talk to friends about truth,

I try to separate out what’s proven from what’s personal.

Not in a cold way,

but to stay grounded.

Most perspectives are echoes.

They come from somewhere.

They’re shaped by larger systems.

Even if we don’t see them.

Global wars are like that.

They’re products of national identity.

Of posturing.

Of state design.

Not the result of individual opinions.

But most people don’t experience them that way.

They engage with them as myths.

As stories they consume.

And the deeper machinery of geopolitics?

That’s outside almost everyone’s reach.

Even the people inside it.

I’ve worked in environments like that.

Places where the stakes were high,

where borders were being contested,

where strategy mattered.

And still,

nobody really knew what was happening.

Not the soldiers.

Not the analysts.

Not me.

I’ve watched refugees cross between countries.

I’ve read maps that predict oil futures.

I’ve stood next to state visits.

And still, the same thing held true.

Most people were just trying to get ahead.

Trying to stay in the game.

So when we say things that are true,

they might be.

But most of the time,

we’re probably hoping that they are.

Why is the truth so hard to hold?

Our inner truths get buried because, for the most part, it’s scary showing who we are.

On a more extreme level, we’ve been given most of who we are.

And with how little we know about other people’s experiences, our own can feel uniquely strange.

Sometimes insane.

Maybe that’s just me.

But I’m kind of hoping you’re in the same bucket here.

That every now and again you walk into the world and think, what the hell is going on?

You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and think, this isn’t right.

Most people are just trying to stay inside the frame.

Not break it.

They lie to themselves as much as they lie to other people.

Truth is hard.

Really tough.

And most of the time, we don’t want the objective version.

We want the version that makes life a little easier.

That’s how the system is designed.

Finding truth and echoing it out is difficult because everyone’s lying.

I have no idea how to reconcile it.

But someone once gave me a beautiful tool for living in a world like this.

Instead of trying to figure out who’s lying and who’s not,

They said:

“pretend that everyone already knows the truth about everything you’re doing.”

And once you do that,

You start to realise they kind of do.

When I feel low, I sit outside the studio and I watch people.

And I try to reframe.

As a kid, I’d make up their stories.

Now, I pretend I’m them.

“Oh look, there’s a me getting ice cream.”

“There’s a me that just lost its balloon.”

“There’s a me kissing a man.”

“There’s a woman kissing a me.”

“There’s a me barking at its owner.

Once you start looking at the world like that,

truth becomes a little easier.

Maybe it’s all based on perspective.

And even if there is an objective truth

the further you move from it, the more it bends into perception.

But beyond that centre point, it’s about reference frames.

Truth isn’t just about what happened.

It’s about who it happened to.

And where they were standing.

When I think about truth, I always end up here

with the way we divide good and bad.

And how that makes us feel safe.

Eating a human is bad.

If I met someone who said they love eating humans, I’d think that was bad.

Most people probably would.

But that idea of bad only exists within humankind.

A shark isn’t bad for eating a person.

Neither is a T-Rex.

And they existed for seven times longer than we have.

So when I think about truth, I think about relevance.

Do I actually know?

Is this a local truth?

Is it based on who I’m around?

And maybe that’s okay.

Maybe I am okay.

I guess it’s all more subjective than we like to admit.

Which means it’s malleable.

Which means if you stand in a different place, at a different time,

you’ll probably see the opposite side of it.

Anyway.

Everyone’s lying.

Don’t feel too bad.

I love you loads.

Poet’s Corner

Untitled Truth

A small pipette of fact,
dropped in and then tracked
around the runnels of the mind.

Watch it leave lips
as a torch-lit hand,
Watch it leave lips
as a howling wolf
haunting the wall.

Watch it leave lips as truth
as pure as poetry.
Truth is just like poetry,

most people don't bother to read.

- Thomas May

It helps if you write them down in a book

I love you loads.

Russ

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If you’re curious about how I wrote this week’s newsletter, here’s my process

Set Topic (Truth - 8 weeks ago)
Research (started Thursday)
Memes (Sunday AM)
Dictate what the Memes made me think about (midday Sunday)
Reorder it
Rewrite it (4pm UK)
Finesse
Header image research
This section (7pm UK)
Header image

I don’t think everyone gets this far, so if you have, this is our little secret.

I’ll put something cool here every week as long as you click here

You’re awesome

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