Lying and winking
Jack and Meg of the White Stripes were on Fresh Air with Terri Gross today. You can find the link on their site: WhiteStripes.com.
What I loved about the interview was how aware Jack is of the stories he’s telling and how, more important, his audience is telling themselves a lie. He says he’s opposed to the preconceptions and the buzz and everything that has nothing to do with the music, and then spends hours and dollars creating preconceptions (is Meg his sister, his wife, both?), focusing on colors (there are only three, because three is a perfect number) and on and on.
Lots of artists are poseurs, acting out the lie to tell the story. And we love it. But Jack (Meg is basically mute, at least in public) was clearly enjoying his simultaneous roles of debunker and bunker.