Would I lie to you baby ?

(The Eurythmics one, not Charles & Eddy, you philistines!)

This is an interesting piece from the Guardian, about lying and the possible root causes. Like most people I had naively divided untruths into "white" lies designed to protect other people's feelings ("We would love to come to your civil war re-enactment meeting but sadly the boiler has packed in & the the plumber can only come this saturday ~ drat!") and the blacker, darker variety which have a more self-serving and destructive intention.

However the guardian piece raises an interesting point: "it became clear to me for the first time: the brutal cruelty of your mouth acting against you, of wanting so much to communicate and not being able to use the words you choose". This bit leapt out at me, as I am planning to play around with the reliability of my narrative voices in the novel, with the seemingly most reliable protagonist ultimately being the least dependable in terms of truthfulness. This isn't intended to be a malicious character trait, more along the lines of him being a "head in the clouds" musical type who rarely touches ground level (by contrast the polar opposite character is someone with an almost autistic inclination to always be honest, regardless of how painful that truth might be). Maybe I'll alter his make-up a wee bit now, with him being entirely authentic and honest when communicating through music, but a rather tongue-tied and inelegant communicator in everyday discourse.

I love it when the connections all start sparking!