It is always a bit of a thrill when singers and artists and writers write about others in their field. There is a thrill in being part of a great conversation. In recent years, I am more familiar with songs rather than novels being the conversations where two people tell their side of the story in a given struggle, to the point where it is often difficult to see the truth between the partisan accounts.

An example of this is the song “Cry Me A River” from Justin Timberlake. The song was written about an apparently true story when Justin caught his then girlfriend Britney Spears cheating on him. Given the lyrical content of her songs, it’s easy to imagine that she was never a particularly faithful lover. Justin Timberlake’s song is pretty bitter and emotional, and it feels real. Interestingly enough, Britney never seems to have written a comeback to that particular song, leaving only his side of the story out there.

In most other situations of this kind both parties leave stories that are a bit difficult to entangle. Take, for example, the case of dueling one-hit wonders, Eamon and Frankie, two English rappers whose relationship went sour. The two of them made sure that they would never get back together with songs with matching unprintable titles: “@@@@ It (I Don’t Want You Back” and “@@@@ You Right Back.” Needless to say, both songs were #1 hits in England, and the first one was a hit in the United States, but neither of them had any other hits. Sadly, they were only successful when they were bashing their former lovers.

At other times there is great mystery about the circumstances of the relationship. Hilary Duff released as a single a song called “Stranger,” in which she talked about how her then-boyfriend, the lead singer of Good Charlotte, was cheating on her and acted all in love when he was around others but was dark and moody when they were alone. Within a few months Good Charlotte had released the song “I Don’t Wanna Be In Love,” which made some obvious pokes about Hilary Duff and had commented about all of the stuff that he bought for her to make her happy. Clearly the two of them did not see eye to eye. Sadly, as soon as the band had released that song, the girl he cheated on Hilary Duff with had gotten pregnant. Whoops. You may not want to be in love, but you’ve got a baby on the way so man up and deal with it. That must have been rough.

We may think it somewhat strange when artists talk about each other in their music or writings–this is not a new phenomenon at all–but the same sort of action is happening more and more as we take advantage of online phenomena. For example, very few of us get to write songs that are played on the radio but many of us have and take the opportunity to write about our lives on blogs like this one. Whenever we write about other people, and our experiences with other people, we generally write our own stories. There is nothing wrong with this, as they are the stories we know best.

But, there is a weakness with writing our stories. Our stories are never complete. We see things from where we are, from our experiences and perceptions. Other people see different sides of the story. It does not mean that we are right and they are wrong, or that we are wrong and they are right. Indeed, neither one person nor the other may be right, or both of them may be partly right, but not completely so. It may take multiple people’s perspective to see the whole story, and most of us are fairly partial to our own stories, and we defend them fiercely. I speak for myself as well as others.

One of the reasons for our deepening divisions is a lack of willingness to hear out and respect the validity of the stories of others. We see only our own stories, our own truths, and therefore we cannot bridge the divides within our societies, our families, and our communities. How do we fill in both sides of the story when neither side is willing to listen to anything but their own? This is a terrible question that I ponder often, with no solution in sight. I suppose we shall see what results, but I can see no happy outcome of such a situation, and I scarcely know how to set a good example myself.