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.
I’ve never thought about the “He Didn’t Say” character as a kid with a mom dragging him anywhere. But now that I’ve paired David’s illo with the song, maybe there’s a sense of how he developed his proclivity not to say. Not to reveal his thoughts and feelings. The illo puts these things in mind, but there’s no actual evidence, and so we must leave him with his mother pulling him against his will. We’ll never know. He didn’t say.
I met quite a few of these non-communicators over the years, one of which appears in “Trapped Inside Your Heart,” where I determined it amounted to the loss of something that never was.
“He Didn’t Say” from Jarred Up (K, 1993) (download):
