Thank you Mark Salomon

To Mark Saloman, formerly of the band Stavesacre:

You will probably never read this, but this seems as good a place to send this as any... I want to thank you for your music, from the bottom of my heart. Your lyrics and voice capture a passion that is lacking from most of your contemporaries. You find a way to speak to the depths of the human soul through lyrics that somehow frame raw emotion in coherent thoughts. You somehow blend hopelessness and self destruction with a glimmer of hope, however faint. Your words are veiled in abstraction that allows each of us to connect in whatever season of life we find ourselves in. More than just hearing these songs, we live them. Thank you Mark, and all of Stavesacre, for your music.

The entire album "Speakeasy" is magnificent, and it is impossible for me to pick the very best part to share here.

This is an excerpt from Rivers Underneath:

Somehow stumbled my way home,
Stood inside the doorway...
Staring blind through rooms I knew were missing more than the paintings on the walls
It's hard to call this home,
I'm more than just alone,
Have I been passed by and left behind again?

I feel it pulling me...
It's heavy...

No desire to wonder why the answers have so long escaped me,
But the arms are open wide, to rivers underneath the surface,
Follow with the tide, ease into the cooler water;
Farewell and all goodbyes, to the shoreline...

I'll see you when I see you...

Silhouette against the storm,
Romantic standing at the edge.
A mystery, now a tragedy,
Left to calloused mourners long grown cold.
His story goes untold,
And no one ever knows,
It just disappears, beneath the fears he carried...

And I feel them pulling me... Heavy.

No desire to wonder why the answers have so long escaped me,
But the arms are open wide, to rivers underneath the surface,
Follow with the tide, ease into the cooler water;
Farewell and all goodbyes, to the shoreline...

Remember when we...?
Did you see that...?
Don't forget this moment ever
We belong
this is home
I've missed you so
For now and always
I cannot recall
My life before this

I feel it pulling me... It's heavy.

No desire to wonder why the answers have so long escaped me,
But the arms are open wide, to rivers underneath the surface,
Follow with the tide, ease into the cooler water;
Farewell and all goodbyes, to the shoreline...

I'll see you when I see you...
I'll see you when I see you...