If you fake the funk, your nose will grow

Bobby R. Henry, Sr.

But now, thus says the LORD, your Creator, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! Isaiah 43:1 (NAS)

There is an old Bootsy Collins song called The Pinocchio Theory and in that song there’s a line that says, “IF YOU FAKE THE FUNK YOUR NOSE WILL GROW”.

Those of us who were a part of the ‘funkateers’ know this to mean that you shouldn’t fake a move to be cool and all that was considered being funky cool.

We knew of the story of the little wooden boy toy Pinocchio whose nose grew every time he told a lie.

It’s not a good thing to “fake the funk”; bad things will happen.

Be-that-as it may, we find ourselves torn between wanting to impress, being superficial and just flat-out lying in our pathetic attempts to gain attention, to be accepted or to be thought of as more than what we are, churches not excluded and politiricks are inundated with funk fakers.

The efforts and painstaking unfulfilled promises, which we put forth into parading around as if we are attendees at a massacred convention, would be better suited for Loony Toon’s cartoon and ‘who killed Roger Rabbit’..

We have come to expect this type of buffoonery from our politrickians. However to see its pervasive tendencies becoming visceral in our institutions to which we consider to have the utmost integrity, is a bit much to stomach. It’s like eating the smell of rotting flesh.

The old saying, “Fake it to you make it”, is not heard much lately. I guess when one can see it- action does without-a-doubt speak louder than a thesaurus of words.

To generalize truthfully, we all have engaged in some form of ‘faking the funk’.

In our relationships, how many masquerade parties have we held dress performances for?

How many times have we allowed teachable moments with our children to fade away like a bad dream because we chose to not be honest? Instead we fall back on the fake, “Don’t do as I do, do as I say do”?

Could it be that being for real is conceived as being too painful? Or is that being fake is so readily available, because we don’t love who we have grown to be in our attempts to ‘fake the funk’?

Comparing faking the funk to a bad hangover after one tremendous party, I would rather stay sober.

Yes, the partying gets better and better with each drink of libations. This new person that you are evolving into and the things you do become as distant as the far away galaxies of the universe.

Soon you turn out to be so removed from who you are until you have become “a what you are”, and that, what you are, is a FUNK FAKER.

The term “spinning out of control” is a super inflated funk faker.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave. When first we practice to deceive”. – Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)

It does appear that the term, ‘funk faker’, has a list of synonyms that could possibly fill the Grand Canyon, but how many or whatever it’s referred to as, it cannot mean any good in the long run.

How to disassemble and reconnect a member of the Pinocchio Theroy and the funk fakers to the sphere of realism?

Read and practice Leviticus 19 … The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy. …

“When I find myself in preparation to be, other than that of what Your plan is for me, please dear Lord, redirect my path back to thee”.
— Bobby R. Henry, Sr.