It occurs to me, after feigning stomach pain every other day of second grade, that dishonesty, not unlike agitated cellphone or substance use, is a social crutch. It is reasonable, after all, for the intern to reply in the affirmative when the project manager interrogates for the completeness of her smaller task — even if it is not, in fact, complete. To my mind, this is the more interesting manifestation of dishonesty, relative to my feigned stomach pain.

The intern’s bemused and misguiding “Yes!” in response to the project manager’s probe is indicative and laced with duress. Whereas my preferred childhood fib is subjective and imbued with the ulterior, machiavellian motive of wanting to return home for the day. This moment of artful enjambment from James Schuyler’s poem “The Bluet” embodies both the indicative and subjunctive possibilities of language: “for him: ‘It's this line/here.’ That bluet breaks.” In the first line — “for him: ‘It’s this line…” — particularly the former half preceding the colon, strikes me as subjunctive. Schuyler might as well be a lover confessing that “for him…” it was always you. The subsequent line — “here.’ That bluet breaks…” — is decidedly more indicative. “Here” is a declaration and provides readers with the presiding image of the bluet’s physical position in space. Or, alternatively and more literally, it is not impossible to imagine Schuyler analyzing a bluet and gesturing to an over-slender stem or asymmetrical petals. 

Matty Healy, frontman of The 1975, employs a similar literary device throughout his songwriting for Notes On A Conditional Form. In “The Birthday Party,” for instance, Healy commands listeners to “drink [their] kombucha, and buy an Ed Ruscha.” Other times, it is Healy himself being commanded; Indeed, the muse behind “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” superciliously suggests in the single’s chorus that “‘Maybe [she] would like [Healy] better if [he] took off [his] clothes.’” She then nulls her “maybe” by pleading “‘I’m not playing with you, baby/I think that you should give it a go.” In effect, Healy’s muse is almost able to muster the certainty to assert: “It’s this line/here,” and be believed. Although, uncertainty is decidedly this sprawling, 22-track record’s essence.