Psalms 56 Barbershop
The Theft of Sacred Objects
Mark Rushton’s Perseverance in the Arts is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist.
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This week’s topics:
Psalms 56 Barbershop
Sting - “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You”
Psalms 56 Barbershop
I like my style. It’s taken a lifetime to get here.
And I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way. But no artist is born of whole cloth.
Artistically, I've felt a little "boxed in" lately, and I decided, as an exercise, to take some images on Substack and interpolate them into my style.
Yes, I guess I’m “stealing” the work of other artists, but none of this is for sale. It just exists and I’m sharing it back with the world.
This is a recent photo from Baltimore, Maryland.
In reality, the buildings are not as you think you see them here. My artistic process has detached the barbershop.
And what is Psalms 56?
56 Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me.
2 Mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that fight against me, O thou most High.
3 What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
4 In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.
5 Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil.
6 They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul.
7 Shall they escape by iniquity? in thine anger cast down the people, O God.
8 Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?
9 When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.
10 In God will I praise his word: in the Lord will I praise his word.
11 In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.
12 Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.
13 For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?That’s the King James version.
It’s a bold move to put “Psalms 56” on your business. It’s a puzzle for the degenerates. It’s talking in code.
Sting - If I Ever Lose My Faith In You
Just before all the Christmas music started, I heard this song in the grocery store and Shazam’d it to remember in the future.
Years ago, Sting said that he could “shit out a pop song before breakfast”, which I always thought was too funny. He did write a lot of hit songs.
Then he got restless, wanted to play jazz again, made that pointless “Don’t Stand So Close To Me 86” version with the programmed drums, broke up the band, sang about the Russians, hung out with that dude from the Amazon with the CD in his lip, and then abandoned pop music for interpolating his own songs and others on medieval instruments like the lute.
Sting couldn’t destroy his fanbase as the lute album, Songs from the Labyrinth, still made it to 25 on the album charts.
This is the guy who was quoted in Q Magazine as saying, “I’m ugly, but I’m sexy.”
Most of “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” is Sting on jazz-pop autopilot. Maybe that’s on purpose. Most of the song sounds adrift, but then you get to:
Some would say I was a lost man in a lost world
You could say I lost my faith in the people on TV
You could say I lost my belief in our politicians
They all seemed like game show hosts to meSting was already based in the 90s.
He did sing on that Christmas song in the 80s, the one where they used pictures of starving children to sell records.
Even Sir Bob got based after that nightmare. Everybody buying that record was manipulated by what they were seeing on TV. Aren’t we always?
I’ve interpreted this part of Sting’s song was his experience in the aftermath of the Band Aid record. I could be wrong.
Anyway, let’s move on to that absolute monster of a chorus:
If I ever lose my faith in you
There'd be nothing left for me to doWhich is basically Sting re-stating Psalms 56 in his own way.