Is truth whatever you want it to be?

Ryan P. Carney, of St. Charles, warms up in an alley before an appearance with the folk group Antony and the Tramps at the Glenwood Avenue Arts Festival in 2015.

     If you look down enough alleys in Chicago, you will eventually see a cellist in a bowler hat. I know this is true, based on personal experience. In 2015, I was at the Glenwood Avenue Arts Festival in Rogers Park, heard the distinctive low-rosined rumbling of a cello, turned my head and saw this fellow and his instrument.
     I later wrote something. At the time, I thought it was a story about ignorance, which has its own attractions, and knowledge, which bears its own disappointments.
     This is how I explained it:
     "When you are confronted with something enigmatic, you can do one of two things. You can either keep going about your business, accepting the gift of its mystery. Or you can investigate, plunge into the thicket, push aside the leaves of the puzzle and try to find the truth within. The former is probably the better path for a life imbued with tantalizing possibility and, even, magic. Had I kept walking, I would forever wonder."
     I didn't keep walking; I found out and wrote a blog post. When I stumbled upon it after more than a decade, something struck me, something more important that I missed at the time.
     The opening sentence is a lie.
     Most people, no matter how many alleys they gaze down, will never see a cellist in a bowler hat.
     What made me think otherwise? What made me believe a clear falsehood is actually a general truism? Easy. Because it happened to me. The fog of personal experience blinds us. Push someone with a strong opinion — immigrants out! — as to why they feel that way, and you inevitably find some minor incident. They were disturbed by music being blasted late at night, magnified into unshakable conviction because it happened to them.
     I crafted the opening sentence in 2015, affected by what had just happened. To me. But you weren't there; so why did you accept it? And I bet you did. You didn't stop, pound your fist and say, "No! I'm never going to see that."
     Why? Well, you read it in a newspaper. A trusted source. There is a photograph, right there, of a cellist in a bowler hat, in an alley. For all the AI hubbub, you don't distrust your eyes. Perhaps most importantly: the lie conjures up the romantic image of a city of unlimited possibility we want to embrace. Leading to an important truth: we believe what we want to believe.

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