I walked out of a David Wilcox concert tonight -- at a place called The Barns at Wolf Trap -- into a quickly emptying parking lot, into the still of a clear night in Northern Virginia, with Orion’s belt hanging askew as it always does, just above the jagged tree-line, and a definite tinge of spring mixed into the wood smoke in the air.
As I walked across the pavement to my lonely Ford Escort, I found myself taking very deliberate and very deep breaths … and walking with my eyes up to those stars. I didn’t want the night to end. I didn’t want those moments to fade. Over the course of two hours, he had dragged away all of the surface, nagging vestiges I’d put over my deepest feelings, leaving me strangely alert and in tune. I think I grinned throughout the entire show, except for a few songs which brought me to tears.
The guy is an unparalleled inspiration. I don't know how else to describe him -- his music does the describing, the unraveling, the explaining, the soothing, the challenging. His music is powerful. It's tender. It's about love and relationship, about the importance of our internal processes, the importance of finding calm within. It's humble and ingratiating, full and robust and honest. Ok. Sorry... I'm going to stop trying to explain.
I’m only posting this, really, in the hopes that one other person might read this and discover him. I’m going to thank my uncle Andy profusely for sending a CD to my little sister and thereby introducing me to him, so to speak. Wilcox’s words have enriched my life so much this year and have provided me as much with spiritual sustenance as challenge.
If you’re not familiar with him, please, please go to http://davidwilcox.com/ right now and order a CD. Or talk to me and I’ll burn you something to start off with.
Here’s a snippet of the lyrics to “The Reason,” by David Wilcox:
Look hard, long and slow
The stars will be your guide
Be smart and let your heart decide
We see best at night
Our sight can reach so far
Deep into the universe of stars
Bright light hides the view
Into what’s far from you
And makes your star so hard to find …
