On Sincerity, Part II
This Time in Music, Art and… Heaven 
(If you missed On Sincerity, Part I, please see the text below)

In an age where sincerity seems to be quietly disappearing from our lives, the question of what it actually means to be sincere becomes strangely urgent again. Our next concert explores sincerity both as a human quality and as an artistic principle.
So besides music by Bach, Schubert, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin (performed by yours truly — with all the risks that sincerity involves), we will do something we almost never do. We will compare artists of the past with contemporary stars of today 😱 and listen for those moments when music feels inevitable, honest, almost unavoidable 🙏 the moments when it becomes slightly too beautiful, too polished, a little suspiciously well-behaved. 💃👠

In other words, a small investigation into sincerity… that mysterious quality many crave (at least me!), few can define, and which tends to disappear the moment one starts trying too hard to demonstrate it.
If you remember King Lear by Shakespeare, an aging king asks his three daughters to sincerely declare how much they love him so he can divide his kingdom accordingly. Two of them deliver magnificent speeches — truly impressive performances. The youngest refuses to exaggerate. Her answer is simple and restrained, and the king unfortunately discovers a little too late that sincerity does not always sound nearly as convincing as good acting.
Which raises a small but uncomfortable question. What actually convinces us more — sincerity or a convincing performance of sincerity? Do we really recognize honesty when we hear it, or do we simply respond to eloquence, beauty, and confidence?
And perhaps the same question exists in music. When we say a performance feels sincere, what do we actually mean? Openness? Vulnerability? A lack of calculation? Can we truly recognize the real thing, or are we often simply responding to a very convincing imitation of it?
I suspect the hidden answer may lie in the next little story. I could not find where I first read it, but most likely somewhere in my beloved Osho.
Three women arrive at the Gates of Heaven. Betty and Margaret are English, and Lolita is Italian. Saint Peter looks at them carefully and begins his questioning.

“Were you an honest woman?” he asks Betty.
“Your Holiness,” she replies, “I am English. I have been honest all my life.”
“Very well,” says St Peter, making a note. “Follow that angel to his room.”
He turns to Margaret.
“And you? Were you an honest woman?”
“Your Holiness,” she answers proudly, “I was pure as the first snow.”
“Very good,” Peter says, writing again. “You follow that angel to his room as well.”
Finally he looks at Lolita.
“And you? Were you also honest and pure?”
“I never harmed anyone,” she says, “but I cannot claim that I was honest. I loved physical love... But at least I was sincere🙏  — I loved love for its own sake.”
Saint Peter pauses, smiles gently, closes the book and says:
“Alright. Come with me to my room.”
The moral is perhaps slightly dangerous, but also revealing. Sincerity does not always look respectable, noble, or even particularly disciplined. Sometimes it appears awkward, excessive, vulnerable, or embarrassingly direct. But when it is real we recognize it almost immediately — in life, in theater, and very often in music.
Perhaps because, at its core, sincerity is simply doing something for its own sake.

​

On Sincerity, Part I
For now without Art or Music

Have you noticed something strange? The moment someone starts a sentence with “to be honest” or “if I’m being completely frank,” you instinctively tense up a little. Your inner voice goes: Oh great. Now it’s lying time.

Linguists clocked this ages ago: the more we underline sincerity with words, the more suspicious it sounds. Basically, “sincerely yours” feels more questionable than just “yours”.  Why is that?

So the next obvious question is: what is sincerity, anyway? I checked the dictionary. The Latin root sincerus means “whole,” “pure,” “without additives” — like honey or wine before someone decided it needed improvement.

Today, we usually understand sincerity as communication without makeup: natural, open, from the heart. Simply put — when what you feel matches what you intend to do.

Psychologists point out something that surprised me: the main enemy of sincerity isn’t lying, but ..😱shame! and the fear of being seen not exactly as we wish to be.

Philosophers worried about this long before therapists. In Chinese thought there is cheng: when words match the inner state, when you’re in harmony with yourself and society. Aristotle placed sincerity in the middle — not bragging, not self-erasing, just seeing clearly. No embellishing. No self-sabotage. (Obviously, I’m simplifying — mainly to avoid becoming tedious.)

For a long time, sincerity was basically the backbone of moral life 🙏🙏. Later, it quietly stepped aside for a newer word: authenticity. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to be consistent .. you had to be “real.”

Add two modern pressures - image and reputation - and sincerity starts acting up 🤡. Image is what we invent about ourselves. Reputation is what everyone else invents about us. Sincerity messes with both — it’s hard to control and almost impossible to edit.

Still, sincerity has one very practical advantage. A sincere person doesn’t need a good memory. No versions. No cover stories.You say it — and move on.

At the same time, the opposite experiment already exists. There’s a movie about total sincerity: Liar Liar. The hero is a lawyer whose whole life runs on lies … to others and to himself. He’s amazing at it. So amazing he even forgets his own son’s birthday. The kid makes a simple wish: that his father would never lie again 🙏. And -here’s the dangerous part😱the wish comes true! What follows is total collapse. Legal. Social. Personal. It’s actually a brutal experiment: a world where you can’t lie at all turns out to be unbearable.

Personally, I get a similar side effect from reading… Tolstoy.)) Every time I read him, I want to stop lying completely. After two or three days, you realize: everyone around you already quietly hates you 🙂. So that experiment usually ends too.

And maybe that’s the real paradox of sincerity. It’s too honest for everyday life, too dangerous for love, and too alive for image. But in those rare moments when it shows up without effort, without announcements there’s this feeling that nothing needs to be performed.

And that brings us to the theme of our next concert:

The Art of Sincerity — and Sincerity in Art.