You get to a point where you can sense when someone is lying. You can hear it in their voice. If you're not listening for it or conscious of this ability you may never notice this. You may just be aware of something weird in the space when you are talking to them, and may not know what it is. But once you start to realize this phenomenon then you get really good at picking up on when someone just lied to you. It's really amazing. They walk away or you walk away or maybe they are still talking and you are totally aware that they are lying. Or making stuff up. it's like their line doesn’t get delivered fully. That's what it feels like. You hear it but you don't feel it. You feel something else instead of what they just said. Even if they are looking at you right in your eye—especially if they are looking at you right in your eyes, lol, if it feels a little weird then there is something there other than what is being said. Some kind of incongruence.

I am thinking of this because it has presented a big lesson for me over the last few weeks. My assistant recently quit. This isn't the first time this has happened. From what I hear I am not the easiest person to work for. I have heard eccentric. I have heard just downright crazy. Some last for a week. Some last for a year or two. But normally when they leave, it is very clean. They sit down. We have a talk. They explain that they have to move on, or whatever, maybe shed a few tears and they give their two weeks notice and then over the next couple of weeks we sew everything up and find someone else and then usually the old one teaches the new one the ropes for a while and then moves on. Maybe they’ll call a few times a week to make sure everything is going smooth and be available for the new one to ask questions etc. That's the way it normally goes in the world. But this wasn't like that. She didn't quit as much as just disappeared one day. One day she just left and didn't come back. No call. No letter. No resignation. Just gone.

So the last few weeks for me and the band have been pretty frantic. We don't know where anything is. Databases are missing. Contact information is missing. My life is crazy. Paperwork is piling up everywhere. agents are calling asking for stuff and we don't know where it is or how to send it to them if we did. so that's the last few weeks. Pure madness. But that isn't the point. She had done this before about a month after she first started. Just left one day. Now I called her back and said hey what's up, and she was mad because she thought we were going to replace her. And I said, ‘look we aren't going to replace you, and even if we were thinking about it, we would have placed you somewhere else, into some other job.’ But because she thought this, she just felt like it would be better to just leave and not say anything. She thought that there was a certain dignity in that rather than being fired I guess. The way she did it was by lying to someone at the office. she said she was going to the bank and would be right back. and then she left for good.

Because I liked her, I saw that perhaps I was too closed off to her at first and that perhaps if she came back and I opened up more we could really make it work. so we both agreed to do that and she should come back the next week. She promised to talk to me about things more and she would never do that again. So it felt like there was this strong bond of solidarity between us. My partner was fuming. She was adamant about not rehiring someone who quit without giving notice and especially when they lied. If they lied once they will lie again, she would say. And when you are working with someone so intimately you depend on every word each other says. You just never think for a minute that anyone is lying. Like in a relationship. But I went against this logic and instinct and rehired her. And this is where it gets tricky, because throughout the time that she worked for me, I could sense other times when she would lie. But I wasn't necessarily aware of it. Or maybe I was but just brushed it off.

Little things like I would call her over the weekend and she wouldn’t call back until Monday late morning. And I would say why didn't you call back? I needed that information or whatever and she would say, ‘that's funny, I didn't get your voicemail until today.’ Things like that. This would happen all the time. but I just kept trying to ignore it. because I thought that it wasn't as important as the things we were getting accomplished. But this is where I really fucked up. because I should have realized, honored the fact that the truth is the most important thing. It doesn’t matter what you are getting accomplished if things aren't as they seem in the first place. Who really knows what you are really accomplishing anyway if the truth isn't there as a foundation. I knew this. I chose to go against this instinct I was feeling. There is nothing I hate more that someone who lies. But I chose to ignore the feelings, the signs of it, because I kept making all these excuses like we were so busy or maybe I am just overreacting or whatever. And then when things would get fucked up because she said she did something but didn't, I would get mad but we were so busy, I would brush it off. And also she and I had made this pact when she was rehired so I didn't want to break that pact. I didn't want to let her go because I didn't feel it was right.

Well when I went away a few weeks ago, two days after I left, she left. No call, no letter, no resignation, no two weeks notice. Nothing. She just flaked out and disappeared. And worse. No communication since then to try to help out or clean things up or train the new person or tell us where stuff is filed or anything like that. and it gets worse. So then we’re in her office over the next couple of weeks trying to find stuff that we need to carry on day to day business and we start going through her desk and file cabinets and we find all this stuff misfiled and shoved away in the wrong place. And we start finding all these things that were supposedly done but instead were hidden somewhere in a drawer or a filing cabinet. Pictures that were supposed to be sent to people eight months ago were hidden, or press kits that were addressed to people but never sent were under a pile of papers. I'm thinking, ‘holy shit, now I know why for the last six months my life has felt so over the top crazy. Because it really was crazy. I just couldn’t figure out why. now I know.  

At first I just had to deal with it personally. Just face the fact that I really fucked up by trusting someone who had already lied and went against my own instincts time and time again. Knowing that perhaps they weren't being honest a lot of time and I didn't do anything about it. and then on a deeper level trying to deal with the philosophical issue that arises when you realize that maybe you just can’t go around being the nice guy all the time, because there really are people out there who will take advantage of that. and maybe they aren't totally aware that they are that way. they just are. It's on automatic for them. And for me that has always been hard. I always give everyone the benefit of the doubt so to speak and just trust them all the way. This is one of those lessons I don't know if I want to learn. Because somewhere deep within me is this undying desire to believe that everyone is good and looks out for the next guy. But the fact is that this just isn't the way it is most of the time. in fact that's pretty rare. That's why when you do meet someone who is straight up and you can tell that they are an honest person you really appreciate them, because maybe it's rarer in this world than we care to admit to ourselves. Some of my friends are like, ‘bro what the hell is wrong with you?! You look at things too personally. Business is business, and everything is business. Whether it's your assistant or someone you hire to fix your car. If you can tell that they are lying to you, or you even think it for a moment, get them the fuck out of your life. you can’t afford to have some shit hit the fan in your own life because someone else fucked something up.’

So that's something I have really had to look at dead on in the last few weeks; really my whole life.

Current Spin: The Hives, Veni Vindi Vicious. Good solid fun raw non-alterna-rock n roll. That's why you don't hear it on the radio.