Today’s offering is a song that started off as a poem and was set, quite beautifully to music by singer and guitar player Mark Alan. I first heard this live in 1995 in a small place in Eugene where we used to go for coffee. My best girlfriends and I loved to meet up there once a week, a place where the tablecloths were white reams of paper and the vase in the center of each small rickety table boasted a bouquet of crayons. This wasn’t a place that had a kids menu, but they purposefully encouraged adults and budding adults to draw, have fun, and even play tic-tac-toe or hangman on their table tops.
Mark Alan put out one CD that I know of, a short printing he did locally—maybe a few hundred copies-- and he signed them on the Thursday nights we saw him when all of us got together during college breaks. But time passed, and just like that, I lived full time in a city far away and Mark Alan was no longer playing music in Eugene when I came back. No one I know knew where he went. My search for other Mark Alan CD’s have come up blank. But I can’t help thinking he’s out there somewhere. Artists, true artists with something to say will never stop saying them.
Think of Yoko Ono who is going around the country promoting her new album at age 76, a combination of dance tunes and, well probably just rock art called “Between My Head and the Sky.” She’s been a sort of punch line for her zany art over the years and has been criticized and hated most by people who blame her for “breaking up the Beatles,” but the truth is she has been an artist her entire life and she doesn’t stop. I love her for that and strangely, her new album isn’t bad and it’s getting perhaps the best reviews of anything she’s done in her life. My ears may not necessarily embrace the tone of her screeching and my body may never find a graceful rhythm in which to dance to her techno-freaky music, which is very popular around the world-- (actually, I’m quite certain my body will never find a desire to dance to it)—but she’s effective. She’s also emotive and very courageous and I do like her songs where she speaks them, almost like she’s at open mike-nite at a beat poetry convention. I love, for example “Unun.To.” It’s a strangely beautiful piece of work that I cannot describe as a song, but it is a poem.
Back to the point; Artists are always going to be artists, it’s just about finding the right fit, the medium the words the rhythm, the design…the “thing” that resonates and echoes in the core of their bones. Here is the one song of Mark Alan’s I will never forget. It is beautiful to listen to, the small cadence changes are fitting with the words themselves, so this page will not do it justice, but since I can’t find the audio or find this re-printed anywhere online, it has been lovingly transcribed below. And if anyone out there knows of Mark Alan's latest work...get in touch.
Said Everything
I got a room and a window for seeing the city,
I waited up ‘til the morning came in,
I went out, I was looking for you,
hole in my heart, rock in my shoe,
Sat on the curb and took in the view.
I guess I said everything
I guess I said everything
I got a wall and a window for seeing reflections,
some believe mirrors see life after life,
I don’t know, but I’m looking for you
in the cars that go by, the traffic lights too,
what if I saw you, what would I do?
I guess I said everything
I guess I said everything
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
They will never put us together again
Oh but all of my life I will remember when…
[beautiful musical interlude here]
I go out and I’m looking for you,
Wander around like the animals do
Tethered to nothing, I’m wild and I’m blue.
I got a room overlooking the city,
Saturday night became Sunday AM,
everything’s fine and then one day will take you.
Everything’s different,
And all just the same.
I guess I said everything...
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