Mark Heard (1951 – 1992)
Record producer, folk-rock singer and songwriter.
If every Christian would treat just one other person with real love, I'm sure more would come to faith than do at present, with all our mass harvesting techniques. -Appalachian Melody
But the music business is no more about truth on the outside of the Christian ghetto than it is on the inside.
When you can see through the fog for an instant, and you understand haltingly and briefly what good is, and how God is connected with that, it cannot help but put a hell of a perspective on things you perceive as problems, and help you discover multiple ways in which you have been numb. For that brief moment you feel that God's in His heaven and all's right with the world.
Until we learn the language of those outside the Church, the language of their hearts and the language of their minds, we will never be able to communicate properly. -Appalachian Melody
It is really a kind of a slap in [God's] face to refuse to use the abilities He gave us just because there is danger involved. Just because adultery exists is no reason to avoid marriage. Just because gluttony exists is no reason to quit eating. We shouldn't be anhedonics under the guise of spirituality. -Appalachian Melody
Writing brings about a catharsis of my own terror and pity. It is something I have to do.
I wish sometimes that I just didn't have to think about any of this, and could drone away my life. It would be easier.
I must at least tell somebody, even only God and myself, what I have seen and felt.
Perhaps we have more in common by virtue of our common humanity than we have differences by virtue of our religions.
Sounds are indeed like colors, and my hunger for a truer palette of colors grows day to day.
It's terribly demeaning to write something that tells its story in its own way and be told it fails because it might scare somebody. My God, must we speak with all the candor of a wax Elvis?
Music is a solace for me now. As I age, contrary to common sense, I am more and more drawn into it and apt to spend more of my waking and some of my sleeping hours thinking about it, or just feeling about it. It is my escape.
We were recording a song called "I Don't Ever Want To Be Without You." The same Christian record company radio guy called me and asked me if we could change the song's title and lyrics. when I asked why, he said, "Because there are two negative words in the title-don't and without ... I'd like some positive ones; can you call the song, 'I Always Want To Be With You?"'
I am apt to hire musicians sometimes because I know they will have some good jokes to tell.
Did you know that Bertrand Russell dropped all belief in God because he wasn't able to voice his doubts in the company of believers? -Appalachian Melody
I guess it will always be that way until the Church learns how to take lessons from culture and from history, and stops... putting labels of "spiritual" and "unspiritual" on things which God never labeled. -Appalachian Melody
I much prefer making music to talking about it. There's something visceral about instruments and voices that transcends words.
Any system of thought which allows no value to human thought will destroy its own efforts. -Fingerprint
Most Christians would say that the music should in some way glorify God. Obviously, one assortment of notes on the scale can't glorify God more than another. Neither can certain assortments of words. -Appalachian Melody
Maybe I'm just a selfish maniac who is wasting his time trying to transfer feelings which perhaps no one cares about onto a fretboard and a piece of magnetic tape. Maybe it's the modern petroglyph, or the modern way to write on the wall of your cave: "I was here." Maybe it is a cry to God about how much I hate the bad things and how much I love the good things.