“A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.”
I came across William Blake’s words in one of the His Dark Materials books when I was a teenager. My mother bought me them after one of my late grandmothers summoned her to a Formica kitchen table. My granny handed her a page cut with scissors from The Irish Catholic condemning the Philip Pullman-authored series. Conservative American Christians, who some people here love to copy, were not fans.
I recall that sentence a lot as I grow older. There is a Rathbones candle (Dublin Dusk) that reminds me so much of someone I physically jumped in Kilkenny on Nassau Street when I first smelled it.1 Oud, I guess. Blake’s line comes to me in a similar fashion: chokes the brain, a little gasp.
I now divide gossip up into categories: gas, don’t blame her, not surprised they’re awful anyway, and I didn’t need to know that. It is the latter news, something delivered with relished judgment and from a moral height, which brings me back to Blake. When someone tells you about the collapse of another person’s world, often a shattering kicked off by a person whom the injured party loved. Or an ambition held close to the heart which dissolved under daylight. I think: “I didn’t need to know that.” Or: all I needed was the bare bones, not someone’s dignity trussed up.
The tone and reasoning for the telling are often as important as the subject of the story. There are messages resting eyes wide awake on retired and very old phones. There are corners of bars I now slightly hate carrying with them a stale microclimate of horrible discoveries. Narratives I’ve only seen with tarnish years later. I run into someone and can’t stop building four brick walls around them.
There is a café I’ve stopped going to, in which I used to love to sit and drink weird tea. Bulky boiled vegetation tea. I’d watch traffic and people and write one useless sentence in a notebook and check my emails which were always about shopping. A friendship ended there a few years ago. I found myself the subject of a mean jagged fable dished out with a knife. Most of it true.
There is that adage: you never know what someone else is going through. Influencers love giving that as life advice in thin-papered weekend supplements. Once you begin to notice you will never unsee. But it is a very true statement. I wish I heeded the sentiment more. Kind people heed it.
Then there is that other adage, the true full stop: none of your fucking business.
P.S. As mentioned, 30% off plans for a year. xx
P.P.S. I hope Matthew never takes the DNA test - I’ve read enough novels to know it’s the man who drove you around the place is your dad. Rush Hour is on Prime rn. The best Chris is Chris Tucker, and Air is the most 3-star general movie you’ll ever see. I enjoyed it. It was fit for purpose. I cried about some runners. This article about rugby fans denying science is chilling.
Love candles, love incense, love perfume. Hate the verbs smell and sniff.