Isn't There Someone?

 

Back in the mid-1970s my dad pulled a plastic insert from a trade magazine at his office and brought it home.  It was a promotional recording from a company called Evatone Sound Sheets.  The overlay narration was a bit cheesy, but the music was quite captivating.  You can hear it here or here (both on Youtube).

As a teenager (yes, I’m dating myself), I found the lyrics to the last song on the demo downright inspirational.  They went like this:

If somebody would just agree with me
You can't think alone
If I could only think in such a way
That someone might say to me
I have never heard that said or thought before

Isn't there someone
Who can see just one
Original thought in me?

If I could only see the way to be a discoverer
Lay a virgin footpath on the earth
And feel the sun reach up and speak to me
You are the very first to touch the brown earth here

Isn't there somewhere I can really dare
To say there is only me?

Isn't there someone who can see

There's something more inside of me?
Isn't there somewhere

I can really dare to say

There is only me?

I played that flimsy plastic record a thousand times.  I loved it.  And for years, those lyrics stayed with me. After all, who doesn’t want to be the first to say or do something truly unique?  I transcribed the words and would, at times, pick out the song on the piano. The song became part of my life philosophy while I pursued an education and a career and family in the decades that followed.  Deep in my mind I was always looking forward to the day I could hear someone say to me, “I have never heard that said or thought before.”

Many new jobs and cross-country moves later, the old Evatone Sound Sheet had disappeared.  The idealism of youth had been replaced by the reality of responsibility.  Lost, too, was my hope of ever finding that unique niche—that “virgin footpath”—the lyrics spoke about.

But then came 2017 and a revelation brought about by a unique set of circumstances only possible in the age of the Internet.  Samsung aired a TV ad that featured a fun song from the 1970s called “Hello New Day.”  Turns out it was the same song that opened the old Evatone Sound Sheet recording.  It was by a little-known duo of talented musicians, Tom Johnson and Guy Drake, whose only album (c. 1973) was suddenly in demand by a new generation of music lovers. 

Included on Johnson & Drake’s album was a song called “Isn’t There Someone?” which is, of course, the last song on the old Evatone recording.  After years of searching for the original song, it was suddenly available for download via Amazon.  When I found it, it took me just 60 seconds to have it on my phone.  As I listened, the lyrics came right back. I followed along in my head, line-by-line.  It was great.

But then a surprise.  The song didn’t end the same way as the old Evatone version did.  This album-length tune added a new verse… one that I’d never heard and one that, for me, completely changed the way I had interpreted the lyrics all these years.  After singing about looking outside for that unique thought and that distinctive life path that could be claimed exclusively as “yours,” Johnson & Drake turned it back on the individual.  The song concludes:

If I could only recreate what I see inside of me
If I could only paint a feeling real
That someone might say to me
I see a heart in you I never knew to be

What a profound way to look at life!  It isn’t about what you do or where you go or how much fame you gain along the way, but it comes down to the kind of person you are and whether or not you do all you can to portray that “heart” you have to others through your actions. 

No, I’ll never hear the song the same way, but I like it even more now.

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Postscript:  Johnson and Drake have their own unique and interesting story.   
For more, see THIS LINK.