About Smoke Signals

Smoke Signals is a space for reflection, resistance, and creative reckoning.

It’s for people who care about what’s happening in the world — and don’t want to be numbed by it.
For people who believe music and memory still matter.
For readers who want writing that is honest, personal, and unafraid to connect the dots between culture, politics, and history.

This publication moves between forms — essays, analysis, music, narrative — but its purpose is constant:
To tell the truth as clearly and fully as possible.
To ask hard questions without rushing to easy answers.
To remember what came before, and imagine what might come next.

I write about:

• The shape of public life in America — how it’s changing, and what we risk forgetting

• The artists who taught us to feel, and the moments that made them

• What it means to live with loss, and still choose to make something meaningful

• The tension between personal memory and national myth

I’m a composer and writer. I spent years in music, then years in finance, and eventually found my way back to the page and the instrument. I grew up in the shadow of war and came of age trying to understand what it left behind — in families, in cities, in the culture we all share.

Smoke Signals is not a news feed. It’s not a platform. It’s a voice.
One meant to be heard above the noise.
Measured. Committed. Human.

If you’ve ever felt like something was missing in the way we talk about this country, its art, its memory — you’ll probably feel at home here.

Thanks for reading.
—Mark

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