Vulnerabilities of Invention — Writer as Snitch

Truth comes with a price. This can be extracted on a personal level, where the speaker is put into a position whereby they must face consequences for detailing this version of how they see things. Other times the cost for frank disclosure is social. When a writer chooses to reveal details & secrets of a specific elite circle, they will often face ostracization & renunciation. In either instance, the writer who chooses to speak plainly & freely must be driven by a compulsion which discounts consequence —they simply must set the record straight.

One option for an intelligent & thoughtful artist is to detail their version of intellectual reality clothed in allegory. Behind a veneer of concocted circumstance, one story tells another in all that it refers to. Perhaps it is a sense of safety & optimism the writer feels in keeping actual intention buried beneath a superficial refraction?Might this enable to process?

It is no small feat to secure a critical viewpoint, then demand imagination graft these impressions onto something which alludes & suggests. The imperative for truth runs great risk in being over-shadowed by details of allegory & when this happens, the message is either buried beneath the fallacious or warped in a faulty translation of intended interpretation; the impact of message is lost in an exchange of competing paradigms.

Authority which wishes to suppress, which wishes to contain the inner workings of a political landscape has reason to fear the writer who quests to reveal impressions of suppressed fact. It is the result of a particular strain of courage that these truths are shared to a larger public & the expectation for consequence following unwanted disclosure is logical.

Is imagination impacted by the threat from prevailing authority when it begins to assemble the vehicle for a story which contains shaming secrets & potential disgrace? Either curtailed or ennobled: how deeply can the writer’s imagination be influenced by what might happen should certain facts be exposed?

Generating beneath a threat of isolation, can the imagination reasonably be expected to not only remain lucid in disclosing a version of truth, but manage to accomplish this in a progressive manner? What of the writer's ego? Is this inflated by purpose? A self-evident interpretation has no other fate than to enter into the public light. Fear is apt to make a writer’s words shrill & brisk. Is it possible to anticipate an ennobling of imagination, provided the motivating force behind disclosure is one of hopeful progression?

There is a common beauty in the language of shared vision—of a world that is framed by inclusive insight, guided by a reasonable desire to enhance. The imagination responsive to a writer’s version of fact, guided by justice & a glory of altruism, incubates the potential to create a shift, whether personal or social. Can there be any greater reward for risking the voice of delicate truth?

{Artwork by Tomasz Alen Kopera}