Every week, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 41-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Last week, during a phone call with Dave, I brought up the way, for all these years, while we’ve been creative together and separately, we always have great conversations about our ideas and accomplishments.
I’ve started to regard these conversations as an additional creative construct. None of which have been about becoming rich or famous in the usual way. Forty-plus years of such exchanges.
“Forlorn” is about the gloomy end of a romance, but the physicality of the house itself is a character as well. The banality of the Cape Cod plans on the cover of the seven-inch intends to describe the mundane nature of their relationship. I know that for most people, houses and conversations are extraneous to what’s important in lives rife with obligations to jobs, families and rules. To me, subverting how we live and elevating conversations to art (while worming away from jobs and family stuff) is a vastly more interesting route.
“Forlorn” from Jarred Up (K, 1993) (download):
