Honesty is an elusive quality is it not?
“You don’t make money telling the truth”
So what do you do? Confess to anyone who will listen?
Pray?
Despair?
Deny?
I like the third option. My life in music has been one of a denial of reality in one sense and a keen awareness of it in another. It’s like there are two Lukes. The one who made Make Room and the one who made High Risk. Working on the new album I discover a hybrid of the two.
The song – Honesty off the Reha album lyrics are below
Well I see you’re pretty young
And you’ve got a fine degree
And you look so beautiful
That you’d make the blind man see
When I saw you – I just knew
That you would be a friend to me
And I would be a friend to you
We could share some honest company
Honesty (honesty) means a lot to me
Honesty (honesty) means a lot to me
Cause a man could fall in love with you
If you gave him half a chance
But I wonder if this love is true
Or is it just romance
Just romance
Just romance
Honesty means a lot to me
Honesty, honesty means a lot to me
Honesty, honestly means a lot to me
Honesty, honestly means a lot to us – yes it does
Yes it does.
I wrote this song in the days when I visited Auckland to get a break from Dunedin. In those days no one busked. One day I was busking in Vulcan Lane one very quiet mid afternoon in summer. When I say quiet…it was dead and I was playing at the High St end near the hot potato and yoghurt ice cream shop (a very popular lunch spot but it went broke on account of cash being extorted from the business on a daily basis).
A wonderful elderly gentleman was dancing to the music I played one very quiet mid afternoon in summer. When I say quiet…it was dead.
To give you an idea of how conservative Auckland was in those days way back in the mid 80s….The lady in the hot spud shop called the cops and had him arrested. The bottle he had been holding was confiscated and left with her. She put it in my guitar case probably assuming it was a bottle of turps or something.Taking it out of its brown paper bag I discovered a brand new unopened bottle of Napoleon brandy.
Thank God things have changed. Nowadays you could dance naked in Vulcan Lane and no one would complain
There was a girl who would often passed by walking her dog .She was always friendly and appreciated the music. Few there were who did .So bedazzled was I….and imagined her to be closer to an angel than a human. Young men worship beautiful women and this sometimes inhibits their ability to strike up a meaningful dialogue. Romance was out of the question….her being so perfect and unreachable.Just as well. Probably would hve been big trouble!
In the years since its dawned on me that society rewards dishonesty. “You don’t make money telling the truth”…and commerce thrives on war.
But I wasn’t to know that then and still feel more drawn to the light than to the darkness but I’m just as much a creature of the night as the next guy…which leads to another song in another blog coming up soon
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
― Virginia Woolf
“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. “One word of truth outweighs the world.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Be safe and please respond if you have a thought for this little guy
Hi ya Lukey Lukey Luke
Just saying hi 🙂 you often pass through my thoughts. I hope things are going well for you.
Enjoyed your writing, thanks for sharing. Being honest with ones self (about ones self) is the biggest thing I think.
I’m still in Whanganui, just finishing my Masters degree so been busy.
Keep smiling
Rachael
I think we all need to be honest to ourselves. The girl who walked the dog and listened your music was a gem. I hope you had a good time playing music to her, and I hope you are having even a better time playing music to everybody who appreciate your tunes now. No honesty does not make money, but that does not stop us from being honest, even just to a selected few.