Lonely Road Part 2

One of the things that I appreciate about Mark Heard is the strength of his conviction in God. He drank, swore, and smoked - but he believed in God. He's been humiliated by a pastor during the intermission of his music set that the same pastor invited him to play - but he still believed in God. He knew his own frailty, his own faults, and the disillusionment with his dreams - but he still believed in God. He rarely went to church - but he still believed in God. He was an insider (one of the first) in Contemporary Christian Music, but was never really welcome there. As he said about himself "I'm too sacred for the sinners and the saints wish I would leave." His last handful of albums didn't directly address much about God, but they did very much so indirectly. He wanted to break out of the mold and be himself - to be true to himself. Some weren't comfortable with that style. Some (including Mark himself) weren't comfortable with the results. Yet he still believed.

He always seemed to have some confliction about himself, about people, and the world. Not so much as doubting, but it was more like strong emotions pulling on both sides of the 'tug-of-war' rope. One of his last songs seems to illustrate it best to me. I don't know really how he intended it - but he's either talking/arguing with himself or with the devil on his shoulder. He seems to both enjoy the action in the first of the lines and then mistrust it because it is fleeting or false or shallow by the time he gets to the second line. It's called Nothing But the Wind Listen

If you should see me stop and scan the hot sky

Don't let me - give me an alibi

If you should see me stoop to smell the rose

Don't let me - show me the thorns it grows

[Chorus]

If you should hear me beckon long lost years

Don't let me - burn me with the salt of my tears

If you should hear me wish upon a star

Don't let me - show me the way things are

[Chorus]

If you should feel me move toward the light

You'll shoot me down like a dead satellite

If you should feel me shake on feet of clay

You'll have me baptized in shades of gray.

[Chorus]

I can hear nothing but the howling

Nothing but the wind

And it is covering up the tracks where I have been

A) I will say nothing but a whisper

Lash me to the mast

For it was nothing but

the ghost of innocence past
B) I will say nothing but a whisper
Paralyzed of voice
Haunted by nothing but
the ghost of Paradise lost.