Re: It's 7am.

[kevin j hopp <khopp at garbersoft_net>]

>Art is truth told by lies.
Yes? No? Maybe?

'Lies' is a pretty strong word, I'd say art is truth told with a kinda/sorta lie.
Although I've read interviews with a few writers over the years that have said something to the effect that writing stories is the only vocation where it's cool to lie and MacLeish included in his poem on definitions of poetry
"a poem should be equal to:not true.

 As far as story art goes i see stories kinda like little myths and myth is a good segue into what I'm gettig at. As I've heard, myth didn't always mean a 'false' story as it often does today. It meant a symbolic story, an expression of truths about man/the universe/God wrapped up in story form. (Who said that humorous quote that's floated around here a few times - "I am a cipher wrapped in an enigma smothered in a secret sauce". Ha, kinda applies.)
So the 'lie' isn't really a lie but the bones of truth dressed up in the skin of story. Eww...

 A symbol isn't a lie unless we misunderstand the language of it or mistake it for what it represents - look at it head on rather than along it to where it's pointing, to borrow and somewhat mutate a CS Lewis analogy.  Symbols point us to something true (or *believed* to be true) Moses staff= healing, flag=freedom, different colors=different emotional states, shell=eternity, open hand=trust,clenched hand= tentativeness/distrust, mutated hand=madness, Buffy's monsters=high school horrors, etc. ;-)
  Is a metaphor a lie or a different way of seeing?
The phrase "kite like a soul" to the rational mind is a lie because it can't be understood rationally, but when looked at imaginatively, with an understanding of the language of metaphor, it transforms, becomes a phrase we can understand and see truth in. 

kevin (awaiting numerous corrections to my thinking from more learned or better writing listee's)