Kłamstwo/Lies, Piotr Petarda 2016
Kłamstwo/Lies, Piotr Petarda 2016

The Truth About Lies

A short impression about life behind laced curtains and the real meaning of padlocks attached to the bridges of the old cities.

Ladies, gentlemen! I solemnly declare that we are all liars! With lies we are born, in lies we die. Fraud and pretense is our bread and butter. We are grandmasters in the creation of appearances! We are the con artists!

Our feet are brittle like bundles of sticks. They’ve been swaddled in cushioned frames with orthopedic inserts and foam soles ever since our infancy. For protection and security. Security is a lie so is protection. We cannot stand on those weak feet for long.

You must hurry or you’re be late for work that you’ve hated so much for all these years, which nobody knows about, or maybe they do, but nobody talks about it.

We conjured up substances that pretend to be air and food. That’s why we get sick. Diseased cells falsely claim to be healthy and slowly take over our bodies. They can only be defeated by the counter-lie of modern medicine.

But of course! The air can be filtered and conditioned. The only problem is that our immune system is unable to accept this lie as well. It is allergic to lies! The more we lie to it, the more we sneeze and get swollen.

It’s all that damn symbolic salary! The symbols are lies perhaps most deceptive. So is money. So is work.

The food is not even worth a dabble. You do not need to know the taste of what you eat. It’s better that way. Go ahead! You have to eat quickly and without the use of your false teeth. You don’t have to know what’s in it. No one would tell you the whole truth anyway. You must hurry or you’re be late for work that you’ve hated so much for all these years, which nobody knows about, or maybe they do, but nobody talks about it. They all hate their jobs, as can be indicated by low productivity and overall bad atmosphere in the office.

It’s all that damn symbolic salary! The symbols are lies perhaps most deceptive. So is money. So is work.

Our bridges fall under the weight of lies.

Our homes are lies. They tell us when we are inside and when outside, and that the difference between inside and outside is so great that we must be undergoing deceptive transformations to be able to move between them. We lie that our life is enclosed within the concrete cuboid, and that it does not leak out. Sunday joggers falsely pretend not to hear all the after church domestic violence, fights and quarrels that take place behind the deceptive lace curtains: she wasted his life and the bed cooled down long ago! He broke her career. And she could marry Chuck. Chuck would be good to her, and now she has to live a lie with the person she never loved and who cheats on her.

We confuse love with lust, with domination and with desire for ownership.

Before nightfall she will cry in the bathroom, so that no one can see her, and he will curse with a mock indignation towards the TV set because „the liars and crooks rigged the game!”, or because „the whole government is a bunch of conmen!”

We lie, pretending that we do not love the people we love. Because it’s inappropriate and embarrassing, because feelings are not properly channeled, because he or she is married to someone else, because of the same gender, because it’s unprofessional, because of conflict of interests, because of the age difference, because of celibacy. We confuse love with lust, with domination and with desire for ownership. We laden our bridges with tons of padlocks closed forever, thus likening love to prison. Our bridges fall under the weight of lies. We prefer to love imagined beings, because real love made of flesh and blood is too complicated and „unclean”.

Cleanliness is also a lie, ladies and gentlemen. Not to mention the sanctity.

And freedom? I regret to inform you that freedom, at least the one we can afford to have, is also a lie. Our fathers fought for our freedom with their fathers. They are very well aware how to enjoy that freedom and they do not like the way we enjoy it. Now we will have to fight for our freedom with our fathers just so our sons can fight with us for theirs, perhaps until mothers and daughters neutralize the surf of testosterone and finally show us how to coexist properly.

And when everything is finished for us, someone will put our impure and irregular remains in a neat box, so that no one can see the truth about passing. Someone else will do a magic spell and express a false hope that “we will surely meet again”, that the end is not the end and that there surely must be something else after the full stop at the end of the final sentence.

Piotr Petarda

  Piotr Petarda

(wł. Piotr Parda) Artysta, ilustrator książek i poszukiwacz. Od 2001 r mieszka w Bostonie, a do kraju przyjeżdża dwa razy w roku. Podwójny magister sztuki (ASP w Poznaniu i SMFA -TUFTS w Bostonie). Przez około pół godziny został kelnerem i czekał na zamówienie stojąc wśród nagrobków zabytkowego cmentarza w Amherst, Massachusetts, innym razem prezentował przedświątecznym zakupowiczom centrum handlowego zawartość pustego portfela. W środku lata ulepił bałwana z trawy i gipsu w ogrodzie swojego domu na przedmieściach Poznania oraz namalował kilka obrazów za pomocą wiertarki i szczotki. Brał udział w trzech maratonach, a w jednym z biegów na 5 km zdobył pierwsze miejsce w grupie wiekowej 35-39 lat. W roku 2015 przeszedł do następnej grupy wiekowej.

(Piotr Parda) Artist, book illustrator, wanderer. Since 2001 lives in Boston and visits Poland twice a year. Double Master of Fine Arts (Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań and SMFA -TUFTS in Boston). For about half an hour he became a waiter and waited for an order among the graves of the old graveyard in Amherst, Massachusetts. Other time he presented the interior of his empty wallet to the Christmas shoppers at a shopping mall. In the garden of his suburban house in Poland, he built a snowman out of mowed grass and plaster in the middle of summer and painted a few paintings using a power drill with a brush attached to it. Piotr took part in three marathons and won one 5K race in his age group (35-39) . In 2015 he moved up to the next age group.


DATA PUBLIKACJI: 2 czerwca 2016
OSTATNIA AKTUALIZACJA: 2 czerwca 2016