DAVID WILCOX

Tonight I went with Kevin and Amanda to see David Wilcox at Workplay.  …Between typing that last sentence and this one, five minutes passed as I struggled to put the experience into words.  About a third of the way into the evening, my spirit was full.  These songs are so rich and so powerful that I was overwhelmed.  The air felt heavy.  I was lightheaded.  I thought I would have to leave the room.

You know when you have a conversation with someone, and it’s like they’re reading your mind?  This was like one of those conversations.  But it kept going and going, and of course I couldn’t respond, and I felt like I would burst. That is David Wilcox’s gift.  He captures something vital in his songs that disappears the moment you try to examine it.  

Watching this guy give a show, it’s more like witnessing a preacher or a shaman.  He is tapping into something greater than himself, something for which he is only the conduit.  Afterwords, I asked him if he would consider writing some worse songs, so that he could play them as filler in his shows, and I could catch up emotionally.  

Why am I going on and on about David Wilcox?  I don’t know.  He’s not even someone I listen to that often.  But listening to him, it makes me proud to be an artist, if I can even use that word of myself.  Someone has said that being a writer is easy: you just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.  It takes something out of you.  

But there is also great joy in writing a story, or painting a picture, or making a film.  And if you do your work well…for one moment…loose ends come together for the audience.  Things make sense.  The world looks a bit brighter.  They experience a brush with the inexpressible. 

That’s what David Wilcox does for me, anyway.  You most likely have your own shaman, your own conduit.  And if you’re like me, they are always changing.  They spring up in the most unlikely places.  Here’s a song I requested of Wilcox a year or so ago when we shot him at Workplay (with cameras).  It made the DVD.