Art Of Pretending

okay I took a small break from watching timothée chalamet videos on youtube in order to tell you more about pretending. such fun- I have to say though there’s something very calming about that man speaking french for thirty minutes (thanks to my french teacher I understand most of it).

I already explained why exactly I chose this title for my blog “art of pretending” on my introduction page (so if you haven’t read that yet I highly suggest you do) but I figured you mightn’t know why I chose ART to begin with.

first of all me pretending to like certain things etc. is an art I am pretty sure of that- secondly now knowing that the film and music business pretend for a living (sources: me), I figured it was only right to play with the word art since film and song belong to the arts, rightfully so. some people asked me if this blog was called THE art of pretending but I have to disappoint you- it’s not. I didn’t want to add a “the” since that would have meant that I could have erased all the beautiful arts I want to speak about, there’s so many and I couldn’t pick just one to focus on. I am not good at focusing on one thing anyway so why minimise the topics I could write about? there’s not just one art of pretending, there is countless ones and me being me- I want to tackle all of them. could be a great thing but also abnormally stressful. I will keep you in the loop.

when you look at the cambridge dictionary (only serious sources here), “pretend” means something is imaginary, or not real, so I thought it would be brilliant to play with the fact that in hollywood (stands for the whole of the film business) nothing might be real. pretending in the sense of creating new stories, of creating literal ART- there it is again, and pretending that there’s nothing to worry about in the business, that everything is fine and everyone is treated with dignity and respect (news flash, there’s a LOT going wrong in the film and music business- I am considering writing about it, maybe you’ll like to see me be enraged over how these industries treat people, humans and especially women). the world of music works in the same way and also shows the same problems that you encounter in hollywood. mostly men pretending they’re worthy of being the ones in charge but I really do not know if that’s working out for humanity at this point. In a way men are maybe even the reason women get so good at pretending (do not make a joke, do not make a joke, do not make a joke).

a friend of mine even went so far to say that you need to master pretending itself, I agree since it’s totally tiring pretending for a living. we should genuinely see it as a life skill, something you start very early as a child. to be quite honest with you I think all of us do deserve some kind of medal considering how good we are at pretending to be the perfect idealised version of ourselves. *big sigh*

there might be a very thin line between lying and pretending but I do think pretending can be seen as rather the funny cousin of lying, we use pretending a lot for when we want to be really funny and the life of the party- it is very often linked to irony not gonna lie to you. it also seems way less malicious than lying, since that’s often with an intent to fool someone. I rather think pretending has lots of different layers- like shrek. I mean have you ever pretended you were part of harry potter, a mermaid, a superhero as a child? yep you were pretending. pretending should be linked to imagination in a way which also introduces a whole other dimension to my blog. *jeez she thought of everything wow*. although in a way I do believe lying and pretending can be linked to each other- great cousin dynamic, but pretending is the popular one at christmas and all other family gatherings.

I hope in addition to my chapter zero on my home-/ introduction page you now see where I am coming from. as I said I really just wanted something way deeper than one thinks, there’s so many dimensions to this name and who knows maybe I’ll find another link for my blog name soon. I’ll add it for you obviously, we can’t deprive you of my thought process.

it’s actually hilarious how I made a list of all the names I wanted or thought would be well suited to then hate all of them and just one day wake up in the middle of the night to write down ART OF PRETENDING in my notes app. but that’s the life of a writer for you there- really glad I didn’t have any spelling mistakes in it since I typed it with one eye closed.

okay that’s all from me for today, see you soon!

lesley. xxx