Trust

“…things done by men with ugly faces….”

Read Time:
2 to 3 Minutes

“Normality is a paved road, it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow.”
Vincent Van Gogh

“I have seen flowers come in stony places
And kind things done by men with ugly faces,
And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,
So I trust, too.”
“An Epilogue” by John Masefield

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
Ernest Hemmingway


VAN GOGH

We talk a lot about AI these days – and while opinions are divided, it would have taken a lot longer to research the quote attributed to Van Gogh than without it.

Van Gogh is one of the most recorded and reported of what he did and said, of any artist of the 19th Century. We know so much about him because of his preserved letters, especially to his brother Theo, Theo’s writing about their conversations and dedicated meticulously kept historic records tells us a lot.  So we know Starry Starry Night guy never said nor wrote “Normality is a paved road…”

Like the famous “Go to work on an egg” ad slogan, attributed wrongly to Salman Rushdie – because journalists misquoted him talking about his predecessor Fay Weldon at Ogilvy & Mather – this Van Gogh misattribution was probably from a 2009 Exhibition Catalogue, where it was used as a front cover note on the theme of his life and opinions. 
It was mistaken for his and reproduced on T-shirts, mugs and posters ever since.

It probably wasn’t plagiarised – as honest synchronicity and part memories can seem to be, but Sarah Harding, the American author of “The Road not Taken” (itself named after a famous poem by Robert Frost) wrote “Normality is a well paved street; it is good for walking, but no flowers will grow there” a good while before the Van Gogh Exhibition.

MASEFIELD

Was appointed Poet Laureat by King George V in 1930, on the advice of Prime Minister Ramsey McDonald, staying in the post till his death in 1967 (the same year as the Three Authors first wrote about something else – if you’re paying attention! You are? Good!).

More than any other Laureate, John Masefield had the most interesting history. 
One of the few Laureates not to attend University, he had joined the Merchant navy at the age of 13, spent his youth under sail on the high seas, became a vagabond travelling across America, worked in factories and as a barman in New York.

So his famous 4 line poem came from vast experience – he was saying he “trusts” because he had seen the most unlikely and unpredictable occurrences, so in modern parlance “why not?”


HEMINGWAY

Journalists throughout the decades since he became famous and Social Media desperate for content have often misquoted Ernest.

This line about trust was mostly attributed to his 1926 novel “The Sun also Rises” but this wasn’t the case. 

It was recorded by his biographer A.E.Hotchner during a conversation and never appeared in any of Hemingway’s books.

It does however sum up the case for what, how and who you should trust.

Masefield & Hemmingway follow an age old theme born of lifetime experiences of people. If you trust people you may fall foul of being scammed or simply mistreated or badly let down – but if you don’t trust as much as you can you won’t gain any experience; good or bad.

There’s no such thing as a wasted experience.

The quote misattributed to Van Gogh shows his life had a vibe that pushes buttons with wild creativity making the attribution easily believable.

(AI? Is another thing – the opposite of trust, the assumptions we make of distrusting technology – or believing everything it proposes without further research isn’t a great path to walk down – more of a slippery slope.)

“SO I TRUST, TOO.“

Bringing the passion and wild abandon of original creative, to banish the mediocrity and stagnation “normal” Design Agency Art Workers feed into their client’s marketing; because either the ability, the ideas, or the imagination isn’t there. Or because they don’t want the harder conversations to be had with pragmatic and practical left brain businesses clients, can’t be balanced by contracts (the guard against trust being abused) – as important as they are – because even with those papers in place it is still TRUST we rely on to get RoI that is only possible through really creative, worthwhile marketing concepts.

Will you trust us?