Artifice

If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. A quote that seems attributable to a few people including Groucho Marx and George Burns and as Artifice can be described as something intended to craftily deceive I’m going on that basis to have a look at various deceptions that certainly use craft to fake situations with total sincerity but that irritate me enormously and to be fair a few that don’t.I can think of a couple of my friends who breathe a sigh of exasperation when I start going on about those travel programmes where a car, or usually a Land Rover, is filmed motoring along a desert highway or a track in some remote forest and the voice over is going on about the adventurer daring to be alone in such a dangerous place before the car stops and the said adventurer stops and gazes out of the window and says something profound to the camera. Behind which is a camera and sound operator. There is a producer, probably a producer’s assistant. Possibly a truck with food rations. THIS IS AN ARTIFICE.

what you don't see

At the other end of the scale there are the adverts that show the quite ludicrous supposition that the brand new (pick a car) is so good that it manages to find completely empty streets in central London, New York, Paris etc that their utterly glamorous drivers are gliding through, usually with a vacuous smile.I know it’s not really fair to have a go at adverts but sometimes they go too far in claiming properties that are completely untrue even if they are skillful and artful (another meaning of artifice). I remember years ago a mate was involved in the making of the ‘Harp Stay Sharp’ adverts. Can you imagine the state of sharpness you’d be in after 3 pints of that stuff.

staying sharp to the bottom of the glass

Talking about years past did I care that bands on Top of the Pops usually didn’t play live. Not in the slightest. I only wanted to see them and Pan’s People.An ingenious stratagem is another meaning of artifice. I can’t help feeling the current government’s plan to sack thousands of NHS and government workers whilst claiming they want people to work is at a level of genius.How about a few meanings of artifice that I’m totally in favour of. Going to the cinema is a voluntary act of wanting to be deceived. I’d be extremely annoyed if I wasn’t. The pure pleasure of fear as a door to the isolated house creaks open, the excitement of finding the treasure, the tears as a couple split up.And then there is the reading of a book. No artifice needed except for your imagination and the writer’s skill. I particularly remember a couple of years ago I had got to the last chapters of The Martian’ by Andy Weir. I had to stay up to 2-30 in the morning to finish it. My heart was thumping right up until the final page.

the power of literature

Oddly enough you’d think that a person who practised Artifice would be an Artificer. And there is actually the profession of Artificer but he or she is a member of an armed forces service who is skilled at working on electronic, electrical, electro-mechanical and/or mechanical devices.The specific term ‘artificer’ for this function is typical of the armed forces of countries that are or have been in the British Commonwealth and refers to a Senior Non-Commissioned Officer. Artificer is a job title and not a rank. Couldn’t be more opposite could it.I couldn’t find any poems that appealed about Artifice but this mentions Artificer and I quite like it:
Wedding-Ring
My wedding-ring lies in a basket
as if at the bottom of a well.
Nothing will come to fish it back up
and onto my finger again.
It lies
among keys to abandoned houses,
nails waiting to be needed and hammered
into some wall,
telephone numbers with no names attached,
idle paperclips.
It can't be given away
for fear of bringing ill-luck.
It can't be sold
for the marriage was good in its own
time, though that time is gone.
Could some artificer
beat into it bright stones, transform it
into a dazzling circlet no one could take
for solemn betrothal or to make promises
living will not let them keep? Change it
into a simple gift I could give in friendship?
Denise Levertov from Life in the Forest. 1978.
Thanks for reading, Terry Q. Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to Facebook