Mendacity. Say it out loud, slowly, and then with force. You know what it means because of how it sounds as you say it. And sometimes you can even smell the truth of it.
Tennessee Williams wrote: “Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity. You can smell it. It smells like death.”
And the reply: “Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an’ death’s the other.”
In this conversation between Big Daddy (Burl Ives) and his son Brick (Paul Newman) in the 1958 movie “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Tennessee Williams dramatizes his premise that living a lie destroys lives. St. Augustine wrote: “A lie disturbs the universe.”
At this moment in time, one can feel surrounded, suffocated by the mendacity in our political life and discourse. The dictionary definition, dishonesty, doesn’t do justice to the corruption of the senses created by a relentless assault of lies. Many experience this time as life-destroying, an existential threat.
Each of us struggles to devise ways to resist “the system” of mendacity. Most of us reject the notion that only alcoholism or death can get us out. What then can provide powerful antidotes to the destructive effects of mendacity?
Try Music. A very dear friend devoted many years of his young life to “Sharing the Dream” of Martin Luther King Jr. through music and story-telling. He invited diverse members of this small agriculture-based community where I live to come together to experience the communal joy and release of music, and to hear the recorded speeches of MLK. For several years the band and hundreds of members of the community gathered on my front lawn (and other venues) to experience a life-affirming connection with others through music. The speeches of MLK reminded us that a vision of the future based on attunement and connection is a possible and necessary antidote to the corruption of mendacity.
When we feel fragmented, isolated, and dislocated, all powerful symptoms of the experience of trauma, it is essential to find ways to struggle back to connection, with oneself and one’s community. Regardless of the source of the trauma, and whether its effects are individual or communal, the imperative to search for connections within oneself and with others is the same. Get up and dance, as though your life depended on it!
