SHhhh!

Shhh!

Keeping secrets and telling lies

I have never been one to keep my mouth shut. I have a big gob. I’m a radio presenter it comes with the territory. I kissed the blarney stone at age 8, and I’ve never looked back, I always talk back. It’s not just saying things out loud though; it’s an openness that I can’t do without. I have to get things off my chest, I find it very hard to hold my cards close, and I find it hurts to keep secrets.
I am such a big mouth I say too much sometimes – my father’s one big piece of advice to me before I went to University was
“Talita, why don’t you try and keep a bit of mystery about you? Try not to tell everyone everything straight away”
(In fact he had a similar piece of advice for me the first year I presented on Download radio for BBC 6, but keeping schtum isn’t a good plan when presenting on the radio).

When I say keep secrets, I don’t mean ones like a surprise birthday party, I mean things I’m not sure even I wanted to know in the first place. Events that you end up being party to, that you would have preferred to have avoided. Bad news. Even when keeping secrets as a favour to someone, in order to help them out I think sometimes it’s a heavy burden. It’s difficult to weigh up the pros and cons of keeping things hidden, especially when its goes against your essential nature.
You have to ask yourself why. Why am I doing this if I would rather just be honest? From my perspective keeping quiet is a trial.
Someone once said “the truth will out”. Is that always for the best?
I don’t know. Some things are better left unsaid.
And is it the same thing – keeping secrets and telling lies?
If you avoid the truth is it the same as being dishonest. I dunno. In my heart it feels the same, and in my mind it affects me the same.
As a favour though, all you can do is remind yourself of why you keep that person’s secrets and why you value them, and why some things are better left unsaid.
But oh! For the simple life!

I however am no saint. I am a loud mouth, as I’ve mentioned, loud and proud. And proud of my indiscretions, idiocies, idiosyncrasies and stupidity. Everyone ends up knowing my business. I tend to tell everyone about my fails.
Some people think this kind of approach is crazy, but I just think there’s humour in everything, and a smile is well worth it.
Talking of taboos, secrets and lies…
Although I understand “what goes on tour, stays on tour” etc. Do you really think that it does stay caught in time, caught in a bus or at a festival out there on tour? Action and consequence. There’s a ripple effect that’s undeniable.
I often think of guys on tour in comparison to sailors –a girl in every port. I can understand that impulse as a guy. Sew your wild oats.
I think girls can have that kind of impulse too, for sure. But there are a lot less girls who are sailors, and a lot less girls on tour than guys.
So as a girl who is on tour sometimes, works festivals, sees things how do you separate what you see and experience from your own opinion of men in general? And who do you blame when guys cheat? And are you meant to just shut your eyes to it or should you invoke the creed of sisterhood and say “hoes before bros” and tell your sistas.
It’s easy to become jaded, and think that all men act like that and therefore all men are scum. I see a lot of things I have to try and forget in order to still have faith in the essential good character of people and in order to not get involved in what isn’t my business due to my big gob.
Luckily I have been blessed with a very bad memory. I can’t remember shit. I put this down to too much going on in my life, and not enough time to properly store memories correctly. According to M. Scott Peck (I’m still reading that same book!) we never forget anything really, it just slips in to our unconscious mind and we can’t recall it.
But ignorance is clearly bliss.