Conversations with Calliope- Lies and Creative Fiction

jlangen — Apr 6, 2009, 7:59am

(Fantasy Sculpture Garden- Nantucket)
JOE: Good morning Calliope.
CALLIOPE: Good morning Joe. I missed you on Saturday.
JOE: Sorry. I got busy early and never got back to the computer.
CALLIOPE: I guess you are entitled to a life.
JOE: I guess so. But ideas churned in my mind yesterday and woke me up very early this morning.
CALLIOPE: What's churning?
JOE: My column for next Saturday among other things.
CALLIOPE: Tell me about it.
JOE: I had a recent experience of being lied to as a way of explaining away an act of poor judgment. It made me think of all the lies I have read about in the news lately to cover tracks and avoid responsibility.
CALLIOPE: But there is another side as well?
JOE: I think so. Fiction is also a way of playing with the facts but doing so in a way to entertain and even teach from writing about what might be rather than what is.
CALLIOPE: An interesting way to put it.
JOE: I think so.
CALLIOPE: So what's the difference?
JOE: Lies are ways of deceiving others and avoiding responsibility while fiction is an imagined reality to which we can relate and use to make sense of the human condition. Talk with you tomorrow.

Conversations with Calliope- Marketing Lies

jlangen — Jan 12, 2009, 9:25am

(Sculpture- Vigo, Spain)

JOE: Good morning Calliope.
CALLIOPE: Good morning Joe. Ready for another week?
JOE: Yes. I'm ready to go.
CALLIOPE: Did you finish Seth Godin's book, All Marketers are Liars yet?
JOE: Not yet. I'm about half way through it.
CALLIOPE: What do you think so far?
JOE: The title intrigued me. So did the picture on the front cover of Seth with a Pinnochio nose attached.
CALLIOPE: Is that what got you to buy the book?
JOE: Mostly. I looked inside and thought the approach looked interesting.
CALLIOPE: How so?
JOE: I have been trying to approach marketing my books in a scientific way as if there were a logical way to go about it.
CALLIOPE: We muses don't get too involved in marketing. So it's not a scientific endeavor?
JOE: It doesn't seem to be. Seth's writing indicates that it is more an appeal to the emotions.
CALLIOPE: In what way?
JOE: When people consider buying something, they concern themselves more with whether having it reinforces their world view (lies they tell themselves) and confirms what they already think rather than due to benefits, features or anything else logical.
CALLIOPE: I never looked at it that way before.
JOE: Neither did I. But the more I read the more sense it makes. Talk with you tomorrow.