By The Landlord
“Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that mother fucker's reflection.” – Lady Gaga
“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” – Albert Einstein
Hello. Firstly, I would like to apologise wholeheartedly to readers, whether in the UK, or the many more we now have in the US and across the globe for this week's topic, if perhaps the picture above, or the topic in general alienates you at all politically, or personally. That is, I would like to be able to apologise, but I simply can't, and so won't, because today is simply too important to ignore, even for a convivial, music-based virtual Bar that we all enjoy.
I can only apologise, by association, to Pinocchio. That is because we have, hopefully for just a short time longer (though I'm not at all hopeful), an inveterate, unelected liar for a prime minister, along with his cast of weaselly followers and tax-dodging, self-serving media owners (Daily MailOnline, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun) who, alongside an army of false, pernicious social media accounts, by peddling lies across all quarters of society, have, and are set to do even more permanent damage to the country, the National Health Service, the economy, and with utter indifference to anything other than money, the climate of the world. Many examples are available if you look in trusted, fact-checked sources. Having Johnson as unelected PM has been a bit like trying out Donald Trump as trial leader for five months. Imagine then, with an opportunity to save yourselves, you decide to keep him? Whatever your political leaning, the 2019 UK general election is as much as anything an issue of trust, and whatever your political persuasion, and even Conservatives have said so, if you think you can trust the exclusively self-interest, say-anything-to-anyone-to-get-power Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, then you might as well leave right now.
Or just do this:
A vote for Boris Johnson is …
Or this:
Political soundbites?
Or make your entire family run with blindfolds across this:
Running for office?
Glad that's cleared the air. So what then of trust in the world of song? Trust, after all, is one of the threads that holds society together. You have to trust others to play their part. So for songwriters who are outwardly self-confident, but also often highly insecure, every recording and performance of their work is an act of trust in others to do it justice. But also as a lyrical theme trust is the fragile hub around which many feelings spin, about relationships, friendships, work and your entire being. If you can't trust the world enough to take a step forward, that the ground won't collapse, or put your hand out to someone or something else, then you are simply not alive.
The Song Bar is a temporary polling station today, and there are huge queues of historic and famous figures keen to have their say on what trust is. As regards to politics, George MacDonald takes the podium to pronounce: “To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved!”
But how is that trust gained? Often through dubious methods. “The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.” says Stephen King, in reference to several people we might name.
That lying is often linked to big business. People really trust brands more than people, but that’s also a fragile thing. They have huge emotional, irrational attachments to things like Apple, or certain clothing brands, for example.
“Brands are all about trust. That trust is built in drops and lost in buckets,” says Kevin Plank, the American Under Armour sportswear billionaire businessman and philanthropist.
Truth should be obvious. The problem, especially in politics, is that lying is often so damned effective, playing on emotions rather than reason. “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes,” says Charles Spurgeon.
And so many lies are put out by men. “A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody,” says Thomas Paine.
“Yes,” says Stanley Baldwin. “I would rather trust a woman's instinct than a man's reason.”
But don’t more people put their trust in God above all else? Perhaps, but here’s the great Emmeline Pankhurst on that:
“Trust in God - she will provide.”
Trust in Emmeline Pankhurst
From religion then, to love, and surely love is what makes us trust others more than anything else, our partners through life, our families.
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none,” says William Shakespeare in All's Well That Ends Well.
“After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person?” says Evelyn Waugh in Vile Bodies.
Love is a fragile thing, and it’s when the vital trust it requires that’s broken that all hell breaks loose, but can cause the greatest of songs to be written, not merely about lovers, but also friends.
“The best fights don't occur between strangers. They occur between friends who trust each other,” says the author Chuck Palahniuk.
Famous music artists then are very wary when it comes to love and friendships. Perhaps the most insecure performer of all, Marilyn Monroe admitted this in one contradictory statement: “The 'public' scares me, but people I trust.”
Eminem has now slipped into the Bar, hood up, looking around in case anyone spots him. “Trust is hard to come by,” he says. “That's why my circle is small and tight. I'm kind of funny about making new friends.”
In the only place where he might get chatting to the likes of Cher, the singer tells him and us why friendship’s trust is built on something more: “I can trust my friends. These people force me to examine myself, encourage me to grow,” she says.
Of course trust isn’t just about others, but also oneself. “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” says Ralph Waldo Emmerson, quoting from his own book, Self-Reliance. And “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live,” adds Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, profoundly.
But the author Graham Greene counters that with this idea: “It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.”
And yet there are more creative people in the Bar now to explain how trusting oneself is key to their work. The great film script writer and director Billy Wilder says: “Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s.”
But then again a brutal self-honesty is also required. “To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that,” says David Byrne.
“Yes,” says younger talent Billie Eilish. “Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you're working with; otherwise, you're not gonna come out with something that's really you.”
Trust is also about the senses. You have to trust them, don’t you. On his umpteenth whisky, W.C. Fields is leaning heavily on our bar, and also we offer him something to dilute it, he cracks out this refracted observation: “You can't trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.”
“Yeah,” says Peter Fonda, with a humorous political reference. “I don't trust anybody who didn't inhale.”
Smell is a sense humans have largely lost to our evolutionary past, compared to many of our mammalian cousins, but can you sniff whether something, or someone is to be trusted? Other than sour milk, or rotting meat, probably not. So what other senses might be used? “Men trust their ears less than their eyes,” says Herodotus.
Trust in all the senses
Appearance then is perhaps an over-reliant source of trust, especially when it comes to the distorting effect of the prisms of eyes, and other media. Neil Gaiman is here too, quoting from his book Coraline, in an echo of Lady Gaga, above. “Mirrors,' she said, 'are never to be trusted.”
Perhaps one of the few things you can trust is the natural world. “Well, by the dirt 'neath my nails I guess he knew I wouldn't lie,” says Bob Dylan. And Eartha Kitt agrees: “I'm a dirt person. I trust the dirt. I don't trust diamonds and gold.” Except though, one comes from the other, it’s just what people do with them that counts.
“Never trust a man, who when left alone with a tea cosey... Doesn't try it on,” say Billy Connolly. Things are getting silly now.
We started on a political note, so let’s end on it. Can’t touch it, or trust it? Here’s CassetteBoy, mashing up a little bit of Boris, to reveal what lies beneath.
And here’s the great Stewart Lee, a hero keeping the flame of irony alive on stage and here on the internet, and revealing what it means to vote Johnson:
Politics, for those in power and big business, is often about dirty tricks pretending to a face you can trust. The sharp 1992 mockumentary, Bob Roberts, about a carefully created singing right-winger played by Tim Robbins, who, mimicking Dylan, even pretends to play music, is mild compared to what goes on these days:
Still thinking of voting for this man? Or that this blog has been too politically biased? Then consider, finally, in the context of song, which is really what we’re all about here at the Bar, if you can really trust a man who pretends to play guitar chords on the outside of the capo.
Capo and chords alert.
So then, it’s time to vote for your songs on the theme of trust. It could well be a massive one, so please try to focus the issues and help this week’s guru with justifications. For reference, there have been some parallel topics in our various electoral offices, which are here: the topic of treachery and betrayal, as well as deception, songs about truth, and songs about faith.
One person we can absolutely trust, as well as all you fabulous Song Bar readers who always come up with musical treasure, is this week’s guest guru, the sagacious severin! Place your songs about trust in comments below. Polling booths close at 11pm on Sunday UK closing time, for playlists published on Wednesday. Unlike with the general election, we can guarantee that the Song Bar results will be for the greater good.
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