Celebrating the life of
Mark Charles Strasser

 
“He was loved.”
July 17, 1960 - January 3, 2002

(Music)

Starry Starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hill
Sketch the trees and the Daffodil
Catch the breeze and the winter chill
In colors on the snowy linen land
Now I understand what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now.
Starry Starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflecting distant eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand
Now I understand what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now.
For they could not love you
Still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry starry night
You took your life as lovers often do,
But I could've told you Mark
This world was never meant
for one as beautiful as you.
Starry Starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Brainless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
A silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.
Now I think I know what you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen
They're not listening still
Perhaps they never will.
            ~Don McLean, "Vincent"~