Charlene Armstrong (Evangel University)
A Sociopolitical Critique of Mark Heard's Satellite Sky
Thesis:
Recording artist Mark Heard steps into the
commonly shunned shoes of the restless, outcast, and destitute with unforgettable
poignancy, deep Judeo-Christian social concern, unusual literary strength, and a
delightful profusion of instruments
in his 1992 album of lyric poems, Satellite Sky.
I. Production details, musical inclinations, and song titles reveal a strong collection from a creative literary mind.
A. The album was written, recorded, and mixed by Mark Heard under the Ideola Music label.
1. Satellite Sky is the last of Heard's fifteen albums completed before his death in 1992.
2. It is co-produced by Dan Russell, a backing vocalist on the album, and Jim Scott.
3. The album was recorded in Los Angeles at Dodge City, Mama Jo's, Bedrock, and Fingerprint LA.
B. The album's musical genre is a mix of folk and rock with an interesting accompaniment of colorful music makers.
1. The accordian, mandolin, harmonica, African percussion, stick,
hammered and mountain dulcimers
and horns add eclectic and folk flavor.
2. Drums, bass, electric and acoustic guitars add to the rock flavor.
C. The album's topics address social oppression and social morality which may be reflected in these titles:
1. "Satellite Sky" (S-C vector 1-A-1)
2. "The Big Wheels Roll" (1-B-7)
3. "Orphans of God" (1-B-7)
4. "Freighttrain to Nowhere" (1-B-7)
5. "Long Way Down" (1-B-7)
6. "A Broken Man" (1-B-1)
7. "Love Is So Blind" (1-B-3)
7. "Hammers and Nails" (1-C-3)
8. "We Know Too Much" (1-B-4)
9. "Lost on Purpose" (1-B-4)
10. "Nothing But the Wind" (1-B-1)
II. Underneath the music industry's sugar-coated crust of
clichés and trite expressions of love, Heard has produced
an explosive, sociologically
attuned album developed with awareness, compassion, and the energy to speak out.
A. Heard candidly and clearly identifies social issues, evoking strong social sympathies.
1. Economic oppression is a motif in "Freighttrain to Nowhere" wherein debt is figured
to be better than
nothing "to show for the years of tears and sweat."
2. Imperialistic rationalism and superiority of one class over another
are the major themes in "The Big Wheels Roll,"
wherein we are told that,
should that imperialism of efficiency prevail, the right-brained victims will become
extinct.
3. Cultural impoverishment is a social issue which he addresses in many
songs, with great insistence writing,
for
example, of how the "package[rs]" of "cellulose dreams" have turned
people with desperate hopes into
"soot covered urchins" (in the song "Orphans of
God").
B. Satellite Sky is focused on provoking love in action and
defies complacency. According to Dr. Billie Davis, sociologist
and professor emeritus at Evangel University, Christians "are to [. . .]
speak out against anything that hurts
people or robs them of their opportunities" (9; emphasis added). Mark Heard, in
this respect, is a Christ-like rebel
against sham and oppression.
1. The love in "Love Is So Blind"
descends the stairwells to find infidels and thieves, meeting the faces of the
profane and the poor. The song urges hearers to translate social concern into strong
expressions of love.
2. In "Satellite Sky," Heard
expresses the agony of someone who feels the oppression of a technologically
advanced world that has caused dreams and ideals to vanish.
3. In a sweeping confession of a person found in bitter loss, "Nothing But the Wind" spells out the consequences
of the gross error in suppressing a sufferer's hope with an overdose of so-called realism
("the way things are").
4. In "Hammers and Nails," the
persona seems unusually aware that his acceptance of Christ's piercing love
simultaneously demands that he show love as Christ has.
III. The album unashamedly shows its sophisticated literary strength in its lyrics, literary values, and complex imagery.
A. The meanings of the poetical lyrics are elusive to the spiritually and socially complacent.
1. In "Lost on Purpose," Heard
refers to the socially insensitive as "icons with eyes that cannot see, ears that
don't hear and that never wince with the pain that we're feeling."
2. In "Orphans of God," the social and intellectual elite have "packaged our virtue in cellulose dreams."
3. "Long Way Down" challenges the
listener with the evocative but elusive metaphorical phrase "Hypnotized
and shuttled in the limousine of hate."
B. Literary devices such as similes, alliteration, assonance,
consonance, hyperbole, and personification draw
immediate attention to the connotations of the lyrics.
1. The clause "Skyscraper looks like an x-ray" is an example of a surprising simile in "Lost on Purpose."
2. "She can trace the tricks of the tracks like the ribs of a
rattlesnake" is a superbly complex example of
interwoven alliteration, assonance, and consonance in "Freighttrain to Nowhere."
3. Original personification surprises us in the statement "I was sitting on catastrophe's knee" in "We Know Too Much."
C. The complex and exciting imagery prohibits a too-easy assimilation.
1. "We sleepless dreamers straddle yellow checkered
chariots," from "Lost on Purpose," assumes that the
listener has an imagination that extends to taxicabs and that he or she is willing to make
the effort to
understand the chariot metaphor.
2. "Twilight star burns cold blue" may refer to an electric street light in the same song, "Lost on Purpose."
3. "You can smell the electric sky," from "Lost on Purpose," involves the synaesthetic use of visual and olfactory senses.
IV. By means of Heard's literary ability, the album has a mesmerizing angle on Judeo-Christian sociological truth.
A. Implicit allusions to socially strong scriptural passages occur throughout the album.
1. In the song "Love is So Blind," for example, the line
"Love calls them like she sees them--she sees unselfishly" clearly
alludes to the extended definition of love in I Corinthians 13.
2. In the song "Long Way Down," the line "From the Golden
Gates to the East Block [sic] states you can hear creation groan,"
alludes to Romans 8:22, which expounds on the sociological reasons creation groans: that
it might be liberated
from bondage and brought into freedom.
B. Some imagery conjures pathos for the subjects in similarity to the
scripture in Ecclesiastes 4:1, "And I saw the tears of
the oppressed and they have no comforter" (NIV).
1. "But this will be a broken man come shivering out of his wintertime" is from the song "A Broken Man."
2. "We will always be remembered as the orphans of God" is from the song "Orphans of God."
V.
Because of the social equality/love message woven into Satellite Sky, the album is
palatable to both Christians and
non-Christians who are willing to
hear Heard's cry.
A. The heart of the album is from Heard, who in an interview with the
journal Image is quoted as saying, "Maybe it is a cry
to God about how much I hate the bad things and how much I love the good things"
(Fickett 83); the responsible
non-Christian's cry is the same.
B. To the Christian, Mark Heard is in responsible subjection to a socially responsible gospel.
Works Cited
Davis, Billie. "Christians and the Poor." Pentecostal Evangel 17 Mar. 1996: 8+.
The Bible. New International Version.
Fickett, Harold. "Life in the Industry: A Musician's Diary." Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion (1992): 71-83.