Truth in the Hands of Artists

By Sarah Burton, Resonance. Posted November 24, 2003.

Howard Zinn and Thom Yorke have never done lunch, waved to each other along the red carpet, or even had a conversation. But what if they did?

We took the recent release of Howard Zinn's new book, Artists in Times of War (Seven Stories Press/ Open Media Series) as an opportunity to find out what would happen if these two very different people were to sound off on the role of artists in politics. After all, who better for this dialogue than Radiohead's Thom Yorke?

After the dust finally settled around the controversial title of their most recent album, "Hail to the Thief," a seemingly direct poke at our president, Yorke still insists that Radiohead is not political in any intentional way. Perfect. So all we have to do is pair him up with Zinn distinguished professor, historian, playwright, and author of A People's History of the United States. Zinn and Yorke each had plenty to say about art and politics, but not without also covering everything from Marx and Picasso to Donna Summer and Public Enemy.

Pablo Picasso once said: "Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth." How do you react to this quote as describing the role of artists to inspire change and show us what the world should be like?

Zinn: Well, in a certain sense when you describe what the world should be like, you're not telling the truth. You're not describing reality, but a fantasy. You're describing the future, something utopian, and something that's in the imagination. So in a certain sense, it's a lie that is extremely important in revealing the truth. It's not just a matter of artists talking about the future or what life can be like in the future, which constitutes a kind of lie. All fiction is a kind of lie; you're telling stories that are not true, but they somehow add up to a very important truth.

Yorke: Fox News is a lie. [laughs] Someone needs to tell the truth, but it shouldn't be my job. So I guess I'd be on the lying side. I think no artist can claim to have any access to the truth, or an authentic version of an event. But obviously they have slightly better means at their disposal because they have their art to energize whatever it is they're trying to write about. They have music.

Zinn: That's right, and you know, the truth in the hands of artists, even when they are telling a fiction, even when they are inventing something, becomes a very powerful thing. Because what artists do is lend passion and emotion -- they lend a kind of spiritual element to reality that enhances the truth, which gives it an intensity that a simple matter of recounting facts will not accomplish.

Yorke: This goes back to what should be causing extreme alarm. If there are political programs on TV, yet it takes an artist to actually energize political debate, that tells you something really quite frightening about the level of the political debate happening on mainstream channels -- right-wing-biased mothers. One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom. Obviously, the duty of artists is there, but it's more an indictment of the political system that someone like Zinn views artists as the seers, idealizing them as the people responsible for inspiring change. I think that would be great, but the reason people think like that is because there is no other element of participation anywhere.

Zinn: True, the political power is controlled by the corporate elite, and the arts are the locale for a kind of guerilla warfare, in the sense that guerrillas in a totalitarian situation look for apertures and opportunities where they can have an effect. When tyrannies are overthrown -- as, for instance, in fascist Spain or the Soviet Union -- it starts in the culture, which is the only area where people can have some freedom. It starts with literature and poetry and music, because those don't represent direct threats to the establishment. They're subtle and indirect, so the establishment gambles that they won't lead to anything threatening, but often they lose that gamble.

I remember being in South Africa in 1982, during solid apartheid. There were little cultural shoots of dissent that could take place -- like the Market Theater in Johannesburg, where white/black plays were put on, astonishingly, in the midst of apartheid. It's impossible to measure the effect of those things because they work slowly over a period of time like wind and water eroding rock. I don't mean to exaggerate the power of artists, but it is a special kind of power that touches people outside the range of political power.

When Radiohead first became widely recognized, did it occur to you that you might possess the ability to inspire that kind of change?

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