By The Landlord
“I re-invented my image so many times that I'm in denial that I was originally an overweight Korean woman.” – David Bowie
"What state do you live in? Denial … For me it’s not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept.” – Bill Watterson
“When Stevie and I joined the band, we were in the midst of breaking up, as were John and Christine. By the time Rumours was being recorded, things got worse in terms of psychology and drug use. It was a large exercise in denial – in order for me to get work done.” – Lindsey Buckingham
“Washington is the place where nobody believes a rumour until it has been officially denied.” – Evan Esar
It’s something we’ve all done, feeling like necessary, but often deceptive suppression of some reality with an inner psychological trick of cognitive dissonance, a defence mechanism, perhaps coming as an act of self-preserving or presentation. It has many shades, but it’s a far bigger trait that’s not just personal, but also public, political and reaching into all aspects of life. Conscious or subconscious, self-deceiving or deliberately manipulative, a media system as well as a symptom, currently perhaps, when in reference about elections, Covid-19, climate change, racism, bad news, any event in history, #metoo or personal relationships, denial is arguably a cause of of many of society’s current ills.
But overall, denial is not only a very pertinent topic right now, it’s also a very potent one for the topic of song as it gives room for so much nuance and tone, self-deceit and irony as well as revelation.
But what is denial? Even its definitions can be slightly hazy. As a noun it chiefly means that act of asserting that a statement, allegation or fact is untrue, one that may or may not itself be accurate, but mainly denial is associated with lying, denying something that is, perhaps uncomfortably, fact. And then there’s self-denial, which can be both healthy and unhealthy in different contexts, but which is true?
Fact and truth, however, are terms that has come under increasing attack over the past few years. To do so is a vogue of popularism and perhaps comes from a PR and political tactic to simply sew confusion. And while it’s very tempting at this point to launch into a list of many such manipulations by highest-profile western proponent, who has, according to many sources, made more than 20,000 untrue public statements in office over four years, to cut through the bullshit, bluff and buster about many things from ‘fake news’ and ‘cheating’, one fact that shines through all the smoky gloom is that whatever that psychological mess of a man says about others, is more than likely, of himself, doubly true.
As the author Frank Herbert put it: “How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.”
But let’s now get on to wider aspects of denial and there’s a big rally of interested Song Bar punts cramming in through our doors, trying to keep a social distance but also have their say, covering many subjects, around with songs might also turn.
“For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow
For he's a jolly good fellow – which nobody can deny
Which nobody can deny, which nobody can deny …
I’ve always found this song, if that’s not a slight exaggeration for what it is, a little bit strange and slightly uncomfortable, perhaps because its history is weirdly inverted. It’s used in the west to congratulate a person on special occasions, but originates from French song "Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre" ("Marlborough Has Left for the War”), apparently composed the night after the Battle of Malplaquet in 1709 and became a French folk tune popularised by Marie Antoinette after she heard one of her maids singing it. But its popularity was used conversely, in musical terms to represent the French defeat in Beethoven's 1813 composition Wellington's Victory (Opus 91) , and then was also adopted by the English for the purpose of birthdays or celebrations, particularly groups of men. The English line is “and so say all of us”, but why was this changed to the US version of “and nobody can deny”, which puts an extra off-colour connotation, as if the celebrated person isn’t quite as admirable as they might be. Perhaps they are not, but why say it?
Denial – a disease of the times
Politics
Someone might get congratulated this week with that song, but whoever it is, but will be bittersweet for whoever is the subject because of the shadow of what is happening to the world. The British naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson said in a military context that “delay is the deadliest form of denial,” but there can’t be a more apt phrase to describe Johnson and Trump’s response to Covid-19.
Sometimes denial however, it is not simply error, but to gain advantage. “Denial is a common tactic that substitutes deliberate ignorance for thoughtful planning,” says Charles Tremper, but I don’t think we can give current leaders any benefit on that score.
“Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd,” adds Annie Besant, the women's rights activist, writer, orator, educationist, and philanthropist.
Al Franken, the comedian and Democrat senator sums up how he sees the denial of the opposition: “You have to love your country like an adult loves somebody, not like a child loves its mommy. And right-wing Republicans tend to love America like a child loves its mommy, where everything Mommy does is okay. But adult love means you're not in denial, and you want the loved one to be the best they can be.
But for balance, let’s have a Republican’s view, but to let’s hear from Will Hurd, who is in fact the only black Republican in the House of Representatives and a former CIA undercover officer: “Disinformation is more than just lying: it's the denial and twisting of reality in order to present some desired image to the rest of the world.” No shortage of that around.
Writing and society
Let’s move across now the the writers’ table and keeping in the US context, here’s the Man With the Golden Arm author Nelson Algren: “The American middle class's faith in personal comfort as an end in itself is, in essence, a denial of life. And it has been imposed upon American writers and playwrights strongly enough to cut them off from their deeper sources.”
“Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it,” says George RR Martin, referring to the political thrust of A Game of Thrones.
“The road of denial leads to the precipice of destruction,” adds heavyweight allegorist John Bunyan, solemnly.
"The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves,” adds lighter weight self-helpist allegorist Richard Bach.
“Denial ain't just a river in Egypt,” chips in Mark Twain, with a daft grin.
“The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists,” says Isaac Asimov, with The Gods Themselves.
And to round off our authors’ contributions, here’s the great wit of Douglas Adams, from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: “There is no point in using the word ‘impossible’ to describe something that has clearly happened.”
Psychology
Denial is very much a psychological process, but how does it happen? ”Denial is the lid on our emotional pressure cooker: the longer we leave it on, the more pressure we build up. Sooner or later, that pressure is bound to pop the lid, and we have an emotional crisis,” announces the therapist and author Susan Forward.
Meanwhile the Swiss-American psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross describe it as part of a process in more detail of dealing with loss of some kind: “The five stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.
Physical health
On a day-to-day level, many of us practice a form of denial when it comes to our health. Self-denial might be good when it comes to resisting a big fat donut, but is it good when you deny yourself an opportunity to relax? But some repress the truth even more serious matters, ignoring symptoms or health checks. The great American heptathlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee admits she suppressed a weakness to her cost: “My denial and irresponsible attitude about asthma put me at great risk and caused me so much needless suffering. My hope is that the kids I talk to learn to open up about their asthma, become educated about their condition, and seek help.”
The Happy Days actress Marion Ross highlights another health area: “Hearing loss very often is such a gradual phenomenon that the person is in denial.”
The British writer and intellectual Christopher Hitchens shone a light on many subjects others denied, but later admitted he didn’t do the same with his own health. “In one way, I suppose, I have been 'in denial' for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.”
Meanwhile the comedian Bill Hicks, who himself burned brightly but for a sadly short time, said: “Your denial is beneath you, and thanks to the use of hallucinogenic drugs, I see through you.”
Gender and sexuality
Denial might also come up in song when it comes to sexuality and the self. Here’s Chelsea Manning the former Edward Manning, soldier espionage WikiLeaks whistleblower and now trans woman and activist: “By the time I enrolled in the military at 20, I had spent years in denial about who I really was. I was openly gay and would go through periods of cross-dressing, and had even thought about transitioning, but I was in such complete denial.”
Manning went through a torturous process of facing denial on all fronts, personally and professionally but came through it. Meanwhile TV chat show host and comedian Graham Norton is far more comfortable with himself, but says it’s not always the case with others. “I am camp. Lots of gay men can't cope with their campness. They are in denial about it.”
Love, sex and relationships
Perhaps the most fertile ground for the area of denial in songs is in love and relationships. Here the narrator in lyrics might be struggling with their own need to come to terms with the reality of having to give up on someone, or stop repressing how they feel and just say it. “I believe we're all in denial about the people we love,” says David Geffen.
But whether it’s in music or indeed the world of film, there are also many relationships that are very unhealthy, from prominent high-profile figures of the casting couch who have caused the #MeToo movement to their victims. Here’s actress Mira Sorvino who explains how denial as also played a role: “The cognitive dissonance, the denial and cowardice that spare us painful truths and prevent us from acting in defense of innocent victims while allowing 'beloved' individuals to continue their heinous behaviour must be jettisoned from the bottom of our souls.”
Religion
One person who would have no doubt been tempted to respond to the phrase ‘the bottom of our souls” is Oscar Wilde. But he resists that temptation to remark about the religion instead: “Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity."
Denial, or indeed self-denial isn’t just about whipping yourself with knotted hemp or walking around with marbles in your shoes. Much of religion is about denial, as much as it is also trying to face yourself. Perhaps the most famous denial is that of the Peter who thrice denied Jesus. And as St Thomas Aquinas put it: “He that obstinately denieth the truth before men upon earth, wilfully refuseth his soul's health in heaven.”
But denial and repression of truth is a subject that constantly comes up in the sordid history of the church. And some have been trying to expose that way before recent scandals. The 19th-century English MP, political activist, and atheist Charles Bradlaugh summarises how denial can be even more pernicious: “The abuse dies in a day; but the denial slays the life of the people and entombs the hope of the race.”
Racism
From race to racism, and with George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, systemic police bias and other prejudiced institutions, this is huge subject on its own. But here activist Tim Wise cuts straight to the point: “The denial of racism is a form of racism itself.”
But race can also be a subject of denial of the self. Here’s Donald Byrd: It's an incredible dilemma to be an artist of color and to always be in denial about that, saying, 'I'm a choreographer first and then I'm black,' when in fact, that's not the case. I'm black first and then I'm also a choreographer.”
It’s hard to see, hear and tell it all, but there’s no denying …
Climate change
So pervasive is the subject of denial that it covers every aspect of our lives, but none more crucial than that of climate change, ultimately the most dangerous and deadly when it comes to suppression of the truth. It comes in difference forms. It’s only semi-real in many people’s experience. "Climate change is like my head: it’s not visible in every instance, but I’m pretty darn sure it’s there,” jokes Kevin Focke.
And indeed it it is there, but it is the head that is also the problem: ““A state of half-ignorance and half-indifference is a much more pervasive climate sickness than true denial or true fatalism,” says David Wallace-Wells in The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.
It’s an Inconvenient Truth, as in the title of Al Gore’s documentary films, and as Michio Kaku put it, by contrast to politics, “science, however, is never conducted as a popularity contest”.
Here’s Naomi Klein in This Changes Everything on the subject of denial: “And that is what is behind the abrupt rise in climate change denial among hardcore conservatives: they have come to understand that as soon as they admit that climate change is real, they will lose the central ideological battle of our time – whether we need to plan and manage our societies to reflect our goals and values, or whether that task can be left to the magic of the market."
But let’s close with the clearest and most effective voices to shine a light on denial of recent times, the diminutive, but unbelievably powerful Greta Thunberg:
I don't want you to be hopeful.
I want you to panic.
I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.
And then I want you to act.
I want you to act as you would in a crisis.
I want you to act as if our house is on fire.
Because it is.”
So then, whatever aspect of denial your song suggestions might cover, I now turn your over someone whose skill and veracity in music and more can never be denied the amazing AmyLee! Place your songs in comments below in time deadline last orders at 11pm on Monday UK time (GMT) for playlists published on Wednesday. There’ll be no denying it.
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