Marrie Stone reflects back on her interview with Mark Chamberlain, just a few months ago
I’ve had the great privilege of profiling several legends of Laguna Beach for Stu News. These folks have lived longer than most, and seen more than most. There’s a quality to these interviews that feels different, as though the subjects know they’re being eulogized as much as profiled. It makes our conversations more reflective, a little wistful, and slightly urgent.
Photo by Mark Chamberlain
Maybe heaven looks like this to Mark…view of the Mississippi from his riverboat
After hours together, Mark still had more to say, setting the record straight, and wanting to provide more photos, more context, more insights. He shared two things I wasn’t able to include in the article, space and time being what they are.
The first was a blog he kept of his time on the Mississippi. He’d completed one-third of the river and, when I asked what he would regret not having done in this life, he said he wanted to finish. “If I finish that,” he said. “I’d have no regrets.” Liz Goldner popped in to say, “Mark behaves like he’s 25. He doesn’t believe that he’s had any limitations.” Even in January, on oxygen, Mark looked optimistic and full of hope.
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Photo courtesy Mark Chamberlain
The Tell, completed
The second was a follow-up email he sent about The Tell. Mark described its dismantling over the course of six weeks, providing me with photos of each stage – the removal of the skin, the skeleton, the head – as though his work was a living animal rising up from the earth and being taken down to the grave.
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Photo courtesy Mark Chamberlain
Last sunrise at The Tell
“Throughout the extended take down process,” said Mark. “I kept waiting for a public outcry calling for some representation of the mural be left there (perhaps the head) as a reminder to what the people had done. But that did not come and I was not going to ask, so it disappeared entirely over a six-week period.”
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Photo courtesy Mark Chamberlain
Skeleton of The Tell
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Photo courtesy Mark Chamberlain
“Tellhenge”
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Photo courtesy Mark Chamberlain
Only the head remained…and then it, too, disappeared
The image of Mark waiting for a public outcry, and not being about to ask for it, felt symbolic then and haunting now. Not all grief is public. But that doesn’t make it any less profound.
RIP Mark.