A terrible thing happened to me recently. In all of the rush to pack all my belongings and move to Spain, at the same time that I was working long hours to meet a product deadline, I missed a whole Mark Knopfler album.
I rectified this hideous failing today, downloading and listening to "Kill To Get Crimson." Several times. This one held out on me. Maybe it was still pissed that I hadn't ordered it from Amazon before it was even released, like I've done with the last few Mark Knopfler albums. Who knows? Whatever the reason, it took me until my second listen to really get into it. And when you do, well, wow. If I had to describe the music in one word, that word would be inaccessible. It's just so simple -- almost folk music -- and the things the songs are about at first listen sound so mundane that a lot of their magic escaped me. I was about to put it away and listen to something else. But then I said to myself, "Self, this is a new *Mark Knopfler* album you have in your hands. The man who rocked millions as part of Dire Straits, and went on to more interesting explorations from there? Has he *ever* disappointed? Ever? Listen to it again, fool." I listened to it again, this time with the album play- ing on my real sound system instead of my computer speakers, reading the lyrics online as I listened. All the difference in the world. After all, if I were pressed to list my candidates for Best Songwriters On The Planet, Mark Knopfler would be in the Top Five. And like Bruce Cockburn (the current #1 placeholder in that Top Five), Mark is *subtle*, man. He almost "hides" the beauty of his visions. But visions they are, in the same Buddhalike, compas- sionate, non-judgmental tradition that I was writing about the other night with regard to Van Morrison. The songs on "Kill To Get Crimson" are tight little three- to-four-minute short stories. Listen to any of them carefully and you are drawn into the world of that song. I'm actually being serious here. Listen to any of Mark Knopfler's songs intently enough, open yourself up to their magic, and they really *can* transport you to other worlds. Mark is that good a bard in my opinion. To really *get into* a Mark Knopfler song is like gazing at a tarot card so intently that you pass "through" it and *into* the scene depicted on the card, and get to wander around the scene and explore it. For me, it's as if Mark's songs are his tarot cards, each one of them offering a portal into another time, another reality. Take one song on this album, "Madame Geneva's." In it Mark could be, for all we know, writing about one of his own previous incarnations, the musings of a bard sitting in a tavern in some unspecified time in the past or the future, thinking about his life, about what he does for a living, and about life itself, all while waiting for someone to die, because it's a hanging day: I'm a maker of ballads right pretty I write 'em right here in the street You can buy them all over the city Yours for a penny a sheet I'm a word pecker out of the printers Out of the dens of gin lane I'll write up a scene on a counter - confessions and sins in the main, boys Confessions and sins in the main Then you'll find me in Madame Geneva's Keeping the demons at bay There's nothing like gin for drowning them in But they'll always be back on a hanging day... Mark Knopfler is in my Top Five Songwriters On The Planet because, like the other four, he has the ability to create a whole world -- one that you can *go* to, and visit -- using nothing more than words and music and his own voice. This is High Art to me. I revere it at the same level that I revere those who attempt the equally difficult task of being spiritual teachers. The bard spins tales around the campfire. Or out of the speakers of a home cinema system in an apartment in Spain. And -- if the bard is *good* -- the campfire just *goes away*, man. So does the apartment in Spain. All that you can hear is the bard's tale, and the worlds it's describ- ing, worlds that *call* to you, beg you to explore them. So you do, and they're *wonderful* worlds. And, coming back from your guided tour around them, you look around for the bard/tour guide, wanting to thank him for his gift. But he's already started the next tale or the next song, and you don't get to thank him, and ask him how *he* sees this magical ability he seems to have that enables him to share his visions like this. Bummer. But the bard -- as bards have a nasty habit of doing -- seems to hears the unspoken question, and weaves the answer into the words of the song he's singing: You can tell me your troubles I'll listen for free My regulars trust me, it seems You can come and see Uncle To get through the week Leave your pledges with me to redeem Some folk sell their bodies For ten bob a go Politicians go pawning their souls Which doesn't make me Look too bad, don't you know Me, with my heart full of holes All my yesterdays broken A watch with no face All battered and old Bits of the movement All over the place And a heart full of holes A heart full of holes A heart full of holes . . . If one of us dies, love I think I'll retire See my boys and my beautiful girls A Garden of Eden No gates or barbed wire Who knows, maybe gates made of pearls Well, if we go to heaven And some say we don't But if there's a reckoning day Please God, I'll see you And maybe I won't I've a bag packed to go either way Redeeming your pledge, dear I'll keep it for you It's not going to go anywhere But your soul, your soul That is not what I do There's not a lot I can do there I remember the officer's watch In my hand: 'Repair it or die' I was told It's a wonder to me - I still don't understand Why I ever survived to be old With a heart full of holes A heart full of holes A heart full of holes I love Mark Knopfler because he can play guitar as beauti- fully as any human being on this planet has ever been able to play the guitar, and yet have one hand free with which to point a finger at the moon.
