Mark Rothko Song

Words and music by Dar Williams

The blue it speaks so full
It's like the beauty one can barely stand
Or too much things dropped in your hand
And there's a green like the peace
In your heart sometimes
Printed underneath the sheets of ashy snow
And there's a blue like where the urban angels go, very bright
Now the Caldor mobile tips a biomorphic sphere
Then it swings its dangling pieces
round to other paintings here

Your behavior is so male
It's like you can't explain yourself to me
I think I'll ask Renoir to tea
For his flowers are as real as they are all the time
And the sunlight sets the furniture aglow
It's a pleasant time as far as people go, how far do they go?
Well his roses are perfect and his words have no wings
I know what he can give me and I like to know these things

I met her at the funeral
She said I don't know what he meant to me
I just know he affected me
An effect not unlike his art,
I believe

The service starts and we are in the know
He had so much to say but more to show, and ain't that true of life?
So we weep for a person who lived at great cost
Yet we barely knew his powers till we sensed that we had lost

A friend and I in a museum room
She says, 'Look at Mark Rothko's side
Did you know about his suicide?
Some folks were born with a foot in the grave, but not me, of course'
And she smiles as if to say we're in the know
Then she names a coffee place where we can go, uptown
Now the painting is desperate, but the crowds wash away
In a crowd of kind pedestrians who've seen enough today