What does it mean?

When did 'My Truth' become a thing?

‘My Truth’ what the fudge does this mean? Really I’m asking you…

I have no idea when this became a thing. I disengaged from online activity, certainly on the major platforms a few years ago, so maybe it’s been around for longer than I think. But if it did start in the virtual arena it most definitely has made its way into the face to face conversations I’ve been involved with or I have been listening to. I hear it more and more as people come to an impasse in their discussions.

So when did the age old use of truth and lies turn into this new lexicon? Now, people have always been able to bend the light around truth for their own ends, colouring it with edited context, swamped in a sea of other less damning truths or leaving it out. But the truth remained the truth and with clear information both sides of a discussion still had the truth in common. A lie was an alternative version to describe something which made the truth impossible and with clear information both sides again had a common set point for a lie. How you interpreted the truth was not always the same depending on motive, ideology or religion but the truth was the truth and a lie was used in opposition to the truth typically associated as bad and sometimes interpreted for good to protect from a harmful effect. This by the way is my understanding, its how I’ve negotiated the world and when I can’t tell which one of those categories it fits in I ask more questions until it sits in one(if it’s that important to me.)

When someone ends their statement with ‘My Truth’ I insert ‘My Opinion’, and generally start questioning their motives for holding their alternative truth and test the information they present to see if it is actually a lie. I have no problem someone bringing me new information so clarity on ‘The Truth’ is clear…or clearer. That’s the thing about the truth once it’s been presented it makes it harder to cling on to a lie. So as far as I can tell ‘My Truth’ has been inserted for ‘My opinion’ I’m sure some clever sausage will be come up with ‘Their Truth’ on this.

This was not how I intended to start this but here we are. I meant to start in 2014 when my nephew who was in a previous music project with me at the time handed me some paperwork from the unit he’d just finished, while doing his American History degree. I found it fascinating and horrifying in equal measure, it was a unit on conspiracies, not to be confused with conspiracy theories. Proven subversions of the law and rights of peoples and institutions in the US. The most obvious one which I did have knowledge of was Watergate, but one that I did not know of at the time, and struck me as totally reprehensible was the Tuskegee Experiment or to give it its full title ‘The Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee’.

Tuskegee Syphilis Study

A doctor draws blood from one of the Tuskegee test subjects

Dates1932–1972LocationsTuskegee, AlabamaFundingU.S. Public Health Service (PHS)

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male^[1] (informally referred to as the Tuskegee Experiment or Tuskegee Syphilis Study) was a study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a group of nearly 400 African American men with syphilis as well as a control group without.^[2][3] The purpose of the study was to observe the effects of the disease when untreated, to the point of death and autopsy.

After funding for treatment was lost, the study was continued without informing the men that they would never be treated. None of the infected men were treated with penicillin despite the fact that, by 1947, the antibiotic was widely available and had become the standard treatment for syphilis.

This excerpt is taken directly from Wikipedia and the image is credited as from National Archives Atlanta, GA (U.S. government).

More information on this can be found below, as well as on the CDC website and other history websites.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study

At the time, so 2014/15 of reading I processed things as I always do and wrote a poem/song. It was a commentary on the mechanisms behind hiding these perversions of justice, but very specifically aimed at a time I naively thought was in history. So here we are trying to hold on to common truth right now, maybe it never goes away…

It is ancillary to talk about the musical influences for the track ‘Conspiracy’ because of the previous context, but I will include the joint love of Radiohead that myself and Pete have which has definitely infected this. The melody came from jamming at the time of recording it was a simple 2 chord acoustic back and to before the guys got their hands on it with my focus being on the vocal as it is here. So vocally it’s as written and the collaboration infused its influence and turned it into something we are proud to share. We hope the song reaches parts of you that embrace what truth used to be and as always we appreciate your eyes and ears and giving us your most precious asset time.